RIP The Sports Reporters

Canceled:

ESPN is canceling The Sports Reporters

Used to be appointment Sunday morning viewing for me, but haven't watched it regularly in probably 15 years.

 

It was doomed by the endless repetition of the same people for all those years.

 

I loved the show so much in the pre-internet age and it led me to seek out the writing of people like Dick Schaap, Bob Ryan, Mitch Albom and Tony Korneheiser because I enjoyed how smart they were on the show. The parting shots were probably my favorite thing on TV. A weekly show like that has been stale for a decade at least, but it was great for its time.

I remember being so disappointed that Lupica would often just paraphrase the beginning of his Sunday column for his parting shot.

 

Used to love watching that show under Dick Schaap. Exposed me to a lot of writers I would otherwise not have known, but unfortunately became a platform for Lupica, who is an insufferable twit. Still remember when Whitlock went at him about Barry Bonds, which of course ended Jason's run in the rotation. ESPN is slowly killing everything good about the network.

Deitstch, ever the PC putz who is always running toward the temperature of the water, ends his brief story with, "For years the show featured no women as regular panelists. That improved marginally in the last couple of years."

 

I realize this is a phenomenon everywhere, not just ESPN, but it particularly saddens me to see how the network has changed my contemporaries as sports columnists whom I admired as writers by providing far more money and fame to those who became deliberate clown acts and caricatures of their real selves. Of course, it's easy to maintain a pose of staunch integrity when nobody ever asked you to sell out, but I still feel that way.

 

And that's not at all true. Jackie MacMullen and Christine Brennan were regulars in the Schaap days.

Deitsch just tweeted that it will be replaced by a weekly edition of E:60, so I guess that's something.

 

And First Take survives....

 

I had no idea the show was still on.

 

It truly baffles me that people will watch highly paid professionals do the very same thing they could hear and actually participate in if they just went to Buffalo Wild Wings or talked to co-workers during a break.

 

yeah, but the people at Buffalo Wild Wings and around the water cooler might actually believe most of the things they say, whereas...

 

Originally a takeoff of "The Sports Writers on TV" out of Chicago.

 

Used to catch that once in a while on WGN. The cigar smoke was so thick in that room you could barely see their faces.