Things I can remember, but are probably gone forever:
- MTV showing videos.
- ESPN’s SportsCenter showing highlights of games without 45 minutes of talking-head analysis.
SportsCenter was on the TV over lunch, and every time I looked up they had some different person on talking about Game 4 of the NBA Finals like it was the World Series of Olympic Super Bowls or something equally earth-shattering*.
*Like Brett Farve discussing a comeback, Tim Tebow being super-awesome, or an SEC team perfecting football.
Look – I get it, the NBA Finals are the championship for one of America’s major professional sports. It deserves more coverage, insight, and analysis than a regular season between the Royals and Astros. But it does not need wall-to-wall coverage with 17 different correspondents, reporters, and pundits* shoving their opinions down my throat like it is the gospel truth.
While I’m sure there are folks who want to watch the performance of every player broken down to the most micro of levels – but that should be a separate show on ESPN2, not the flagship program for sports scores and highlights. For most sports fans, we don’t need to listen to you dissect the trumped-up story lines that you made up two days ago.
*As a side note, I like how ESPN has taken to showing the “resume” for some of their talking heads, such as their playing career or history covering a team or writing for a paper, as if to help boost their credibility. I just wish that for Tim Legler’s resume they’d include his time with the Omaha Racers of the CBA.
So please, ESPN, let’s try to keep the game analysis to under 20 minutes and devote some time to other sporting events – such as the ones I might have missed while I was watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
Feit Can Write 