Friday, May 20, 2011

Dare I say: Sportscenter, over-rated?


            Over the last two years, dating back to the Favre fiasco, I have been re-thinking my love for ESPN’s Sportscenter.
            When I was a kid watching Sportscenter during the summer was my dream come true. I’d wake up at like 11 a.m. come down stairs and watch Sportscenter, over, and over, and over again until my parents yelled at me to turn the T.V. off because it was “rotting my brain.”
This summer I can hardly watch 20 minutes of it! Now I only watch it to see whose playing well on my fantasy baseball team or to catch up on the Yankees highlights that I missed. But, still that has little interest to me because I watch the actual games. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, but I know we are few and far between.
As I said earlier, I lost interest a little over a year ago when the whole “what will Favre do next,” segments. By the third day of this “coverage,” I finally decided to be done with Sportscenter.
But it’s not only the Favre stuff that “grinded my gears,” it went from being a show about highlights, game recaps and information that was useful to sports fans. Now it is filled with constant NFL lockout coverage, which as much as it matters to us, has really gotten old. Listen, I don’t need Adam Schefter (who is a PR nightmare when it comes to his “insider” information) telling me about the same information everyday. GIVE IT A REST, wait like a week or so for something important to happen, then the public will stop going in and out with enthusiasm for the likelihood of an NFL season.
It’s not only the over coverage of events that gets me, it also comes to the analyst “talent,” they have now. I could care less if Antonio Pierce won a Super Bowl or not, that is moot when it comes to his abilities to articulate what he knows about the sport. And now they have Curt Schilling for baseball?!?! Who are you kidding with these hires? It’s like ESPN wants their Public Relations staff to work extra hard year round! This man has been nothing but trouble since he retired. Again, he was a great pitcher throughout his career, which does not mean he is a good analyst; he doesn’t even have a good relationship with the media!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling#Conflicts_with_players look at the conflict with the media section. 
Does anyone remember the show they had called “Dream Job,” I loved that show; they actually took time to see who was the best ONE candidate to be on-air talent. My question to them now would be this: When did their on-air talent process go from: quality over quantity to quantity over quality? Because if that’s the case, they really need to go back to the old way.
Now, I’m not saying I hate everything ESPN; I love their sports coverage, providing me with sports from baseball to soccer, at any level. But, Sportscenter is getting on my last nerve, there needs to be some kind of readjustment to the set-up of it, like it back when Chris Berman and Bob Ley were the two of the 5 or 6 anchors they had on staff, finding fun ways to recap sports.