In praise of ESPN

I am just barely old enough to remember ESPN in its prime. Just old enough to remember the "Big Show," hosted by Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick. Just old enough to remember when everybody loved Chris Berman. Just old enough to remember to remember Larry Biel shrieking, "Aloha means goodbye!"

Unlike many people who remember the good ol' days of the Entertainment Sports Programming Network, I still enjoy its new offerings. Maybe not as much as old school NFL Prime Time, but it's still tolerable, and I couldn't imagine a day with out it. I don't understand how so-called sports fans can blog incessantly about the network, picking apart every problem they have with ESPN.

While I may not have loved the "Whose Now" segment that they ran over the summer, SportsCenter still is the best place to catch up on whatever I missed during the day of sports. I mean what else am I going to watch, Best Damn Sports Show?

I don't know too many people who don't love Kornheiser and Wilbon on Pardon the Interruption. I don't know too many people who dislike the in-depth coverage that ESPN gives baseball and football, yet all you ever hear are complaints about what ESPN doesn't do, or what they could do better.

Sitting right next to me, somebody just mentioned how ESPN has been less sports and more entertainment lately. Well yeah, it was summer and baseball was the only real sport that mattered. How else are you going to find programming for five ESPN channels, 24 hours a day? You can only re-run SportsCenter so many times.

Now, of course ESPN is not without faults. They fired Harold Reynolds for sexual harassment, yet didn't fire buffoon Sean Salsbury for apparently taking pictures of his naked man region and showing it to interns. I guess that's their prerogative, but that's not my biggest problem with ESPN.

My biggest problem stems from ESPN's over saturation of Stuart Scott. Scott ranks, at best, eighth among current SportsCenter anchors - behind Scott Van Pelt, John Anderson, John Buccigross, Steve Levy, Bob Ley, Chris McKendry, Carl Ravetch, and Erin Andrews (I know Andrews isn't an anchor, but I'm sure she can do whatever she puts her mind to).

Despite the number of people that have more talent in one eye than Scott has in... well, his one good eye, he gets more face time and more opportunities than anyone else at the network.

It's not his ghetto-fabulous rants that irritate me - it's the ridiculous stats. If Scott ran the world, not only would we know that Alex Rodriguez leads the major leagues in home runs, but also that A-Rod leads the league in most homeruns in the eighth inning with two outs on the road on Mondays.

But again, these are minor molehills on the ESPN mountain. We should be thankful that ESPN is readily available, unlike the Big Ten network, the NFL network and the Spice channel.

There are people out there who spout out uneducated rants about ESPN just because the network tries to cater to the general public, instead of one niche - crazed sports-enthusiasts. That's just good business.

When people write that ESPN has become less about sports and more about entertainment, they are saying more about today's culture and less about ESPN. Nobody is happy with just knowing an athlete's stats and what team he's on. They need to know where he eats, what he eats and whom he is eating (with). I have no problem with ESPN trying to cater to this part of American society.

Plus, and this is non-arguable, any ESPN segment that manages to feature Jessica Biel and Erin Andrews deserves to be televised, even if there has to be a better way to showcase these talents other then the ill-conceived "Whose Now."

Lastly, and this is important, how about those SportsCenter commercials? One of my personal favorites is the newest one - with Miami police officer Shaquille O'Neal helping Mike the Tiger out of a tree. Ordinarily this would just be funny, but what makes it classic is that Mike the Tiger is the mascot for O'Neal's alma mater - LSU. Also O'Neal actually is a Miami police officer.

So, as ESPN rumbles, stumbles, bumbles and fumbles into the future - you can't hope to stop the network, you can only hope to contain it.

Goodnight Canada.