April 9th, 2008
Yeah, that’s right. I said it. SportsCenter is a terrible show. I used to absolutely love it. In fact, that old theme song still takes me back to summertime as a kid, sleeping in and watching baseball highlights in the late morning before doing anything and everything I could think of for the rest of the day (likely playing home run derby in my friend Mak’s backyard, cranking tennis balls over a pile of firewood that made for one hell of an outfield wall).
But these days? The show is 40% flying graphics and 50% fluff/worthless analysis and commentary. It used to be a half hour show (an hour on mondays to cover the weekend), but a little while back they switched it to an hour format every day. Ostensibly, this was so they could fit in some more quality material and be able to include clips from all the games instead of just a few. But they’re not filling that extra half hour with any more real content.
Two days ago, I tuned in to check out highlights from the Phillies game. I subscribe to MLB audio and can listen to the radio broadcast of any major league game. But being on the West coast, I don’t get too much exposure to my beloved baseball team, and I like to catch all the video clips I can. That day, Philly hit four home runs in the game, and I thought I’d take a gander at the highlights. I sat and watched the full hour and got through all the talk about NCAA basketball (which I don’t care about) only to realize that I was not going to see any Phillies highlights. I had left the room occasionally, but only during commercial breaks, and only for a short time, since SC breaks tend to be brief. But somehow I missed the one thing I wanted to see. It had to have been on at some point, right?
No matter. The next day, the Phils beat the Mets for the 9th straight game and Chase Utley tied a league record by being beaned by a pitch three times (plus he got hit in the back with a bad throw during an attempted double play). Gee, I thought to myself, that’s pretty funny. I’d like to see the highlights, and hear what clever thing the SC anchors must have to say about it.
