The Worldwide Leader in (Anything But) Sports.

2007-03-22T01:38:00.000-04:00

I tell ya. Maybe too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

Let me say this. I'm a sports broadcaster. I'm a college sports play-by-play guy. I'm not a stand-up comedian. I'm not Jerry Seinfeld's production assistant or coffee-getter. I'm not witty. I'm just a sports broadcaster.

An what ESPN has done to sports in the past decade has been ridiculous.

It's one thing to put on different genres of sport. Hell, diversity is good in many cases. But sometimes, ESPN just needs to chill.

Ever since ABC and Disney purchased ESPN, the company has gone downhill. More money and more ideas have led to many regular Joe Schmo's out there who love their sports cut and dry to go "huh"?

For example, there's a big film festival on the horizon. ESPN will debut 14...(yeah, count 'em 14) films. Unbelievable. As if they didn't get the idea on their brilliant filmography after classics such as "3" and the movie about Bear Bryant.

But this shouldn't be surprising. They think that blending the world of sports and entertainment is good for us. It's as if "we're going to give you sports and combine it with a star on an ABC show and you're going to like it". Yeah, I'll like to get my remote and change the channel.

Of course, it's not just movies but shows. I mean Jim Rome has been moved around so much, you don't know when he's on (is he even on anymore?). Stephen A. Smith...LOL...HORRIBLE! His show got canceled right?

We have Cold Pizza and Mike and Mike on in the mornings. Of course some brain child thought it was nice to turn Mike and Mike into a television show. Remember, it was a radio show. So, you isolate the radio audience in order to grab a tv viewer's attention who might have 10 minutes to watch while a guy on the radio probably drives 20-30 minutes to work. PRIORITIES PEOPLE!

Plus, you have all these witty little segments..."Buy or Sell, Hot Seat" and so on and so forth. Just give me my sports cut and dry will ya!!!

So that's why ESPN has become unwatchable to me. It's even though for me to sit through their games even more. Maybe because I'm so busy with my own career that maybe I'm basketballed out when it comes time to relax and turn on a game.

Remember when there were no graphical overlays, no multi-million dollar HDTV sets that make you look like you're in a video game, no ex-coaches who sucked ASS at what they did and immediately became experts, no sound effects during the games?

Remember when the old SportsCenter theme used to play instead of the now trademarked "dah dah dah...dah dah dah"? Remember when the game itself used to be the focal point instead of having a bunch of washed-up hasbeens talk in soundbites?

Well that's how ESPN used to be...Before It Sucked.

Welcome Aboard!

2007-03-21T02:39:00.000-04:00

This is my second attempt at a new blog. This one will focus on things that were good before they sucked.

So I will use this first blog entry on "Before It Sucked" to mention MTV. Remember it before it sucked? It was great! They actually played music. Now, I didn't have cable back in the 80's. Hell, I didn't even get cable until the early 90's but I had sisters that had cable and family vacations allowed me to watch cable.

I didn't watch MTV much but when I did, it was great to have video, after video, after video on it. Then it started to dive into other sorts of programming.

Remote Control was kickass and offered something different to the channel. However, it didn't take away from the primary focus of the channel. The MUSIC!

Then you had "reality" shows such as The Real World come on board and then Road Rules. Soon, people started talking about MTV show characters such as Puck rather than what tape to get because its video was on Yo MTV Raps.

So that's just a smidge of what the blog will become. MTV was great and offered wall to wall music videos...before it sucked.