Tom Mees, We Hardly Knew Ye; The Meteoric Rise and Precipitous Fall of ESPN

"So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
-Robert Frost

"Marge, I've been watching women's volleyball on ESPN..."
-Homer Simpson

The absolute masterful authority television wields over our consciousness is both terrifying and well, terrifying, and I must confess, with great regret, my inability to completely divorce myself from it's inexorable clutches. Recent history, the last month or so, has found me migrating away from my previous weekly average of cathode ray consumption. Many factors have influenced this negative trend and are not of importance vis a vis this discussion. This notion finds its praxis upon examination of what I feel I am missing, and what has faded into the background cacophony. My thesis, while somewhat shocking to me, is simple: I don't miss Sportscenter.

Now in my younger days, I was a rather impressionable little waif, subject to the will of the media, my parents, the rest of my family, the kids at school, and the Catholic Church (don't worry, I'm a recovering Catholic now). One of the most influential franchises on my overall adult psyche happens to be the Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN). My younger days, especially in summer, went this way: wake up, watch Sportscenter, do chores, then play baseball with the kids in the neighborhood at Cleon Yards at Huron Park. Sportscenter, along with many other factors, made me into the rabid sports fan that I am today (I watch horse racing for crying out loud).

Sportscenter used to be the pinnacle when it came to informative programming. An impressionable youth could at one time be indoctrinated by Tom Mees or Charlie Steiner in a matter of thirty minutes. The show was a non-stop barrage of pitchers' won/loss records, quarterback ratings, and pga tour rankings, all seen without the benefit of one in-show promo. The show, on a daily basis, was always thirty minutes unless it was Sunday when they expanded to sixty. It seemed necessary at the time. The move accommodated an increasingly vast palate of newsworthy sporting events on any given Sunday. Tragically, it was the beginning of the end.

The fledgling Connecticut network, behind the strength of a growing audience, was making waves nationally. Unfortunately, ESPN began to focus more on the personalities of the anchors rather than the actual games being played. Admittedly, I too fell victim to this trend. I loved when Craig Kilborn and Keith Olberman would yuk it up on the set. I loved when the network introduced their special brand of off kilter commercials featuring athletes and on-air personalities. Little did I know the successes of these baby-steps into the greater media would lead to the denigration of the entire franchise.



Eventually, the network launched sport-specific highlight shows like Baseball Tonight, thus enabling them to put less content in their flagship program. This is that damn red flag. The show is a mere shell of what it once was. It caters to the average fan as much as Access Hollywood does. Sure, I would love Sportscenter if I were a New York, Boston, Cowboy, or Los Angeles fan. Don't get mad at me for saying that they concentrate all too much resource on those markets, because I understand that is the way the business runs. That is understandable and even forgivable.

When I watch Sportscenter, I want to know what happened. I don't need some overly concussed ex-athlete, short on dollars from too many trips to the bunny ranch, telling me what I just witnessed in a game in order to make his house note and his child support payments. I don't need a lisping, has-been coach spitting all over the set about how he is the greatest coach ever. I don't need fifteen minutes out of sixty devoted to what is coming up later in a show. What I need the least is hackneyed catchphrases out of a pill popping, alcoholic blow hard. (Please, for the love of humanity, send him back, back, back, back, back, back to where he came from.)

Now, you don't drink apple martinis on guys' night out, you don't study during recess, you don't let Jesse McCartney perform during halftime at football games (oops, unless you run the Detroit Lions organization...but that's the least of their problems), and you watch 24 - not American Idol; so how on God's green earth is it permissible to talk about A-Rod, Madonna and divorce on Sportscenter!?!

Any good news person knows the stories that will get the most attention go first. BUT: So what if Tony Romo grew up watching Brett Farve? So did I, but that doesn't really effect my quarterback rating, the likelihood that Jessica Simpson have the slightest chance with me (she is in more danger of growing man parts then me ever using mine on her), or how many times I pick my nose in a given day. Tony Romo is still overrated, and Jessica Simpson is still as vapid as her dad is creepy.

It pains me to say snidely, what a joke. Catastrophically, ESPN is now run by the Disney empire and Sportscenter is about as informative as Perez Hilton. What's next, Oprah buying in?