After two weeks of speculation and a mysterious absence from last Tuesday's show - the day the 'Big' announcement was supposed to happen - Dan Patrick just announced he will be leaving the boo-yah network on August 17 of this year to do...whatever.Yawn.
Aside from my collective indifference to the speculation and announcement as in pertains directly to Patrick, I can only hope this deals a serious blow to the silliness that is ESPN.
Patrick's show is and has always been the definition of dull/boring/monotonous and, one of my favorite words, jejune. The show was always a case study on the stupidity that other people find funny. But with the addition of Keith Olbermann from 1pm to 2pm, the show became passable, mainly because Olbermann is and has always been smart, relevant and highly entertaining.
Keith's show, Countdown on MSNBC, is the best news show on television along with being the show that brought down Rumsfeld in a glorious diatribe that gave me a faint, glimmering hope for American politics (if you haven't watch this, do so!).
Dan Patrick isn't really the face of the network anymore. There has been a concerted effort on the part of ESPN to rein in the egos in order to keep the costs down when it comes to contract negotiations. But there is no denying the possible effect this will have. The last of the old guard is gone, leaving the Stuart Scotts of the world to man the ship. One can only hope someone will pony up the dough to present a challenge to what's become the Evil Empire of sports broadcasting. The time seems right.
I never really cared about ESPN as a presenter/business, it was annoying but not filthy evil, until I read stuff like this and this and this and this.
Throw on the fact that I am now supposed to give a shit about NASCAR, I can only hope ESPN begins to whither on the vine. I'm sure that will come to fruition like my prediction that hip-hop would only be a fad.
2 comments:
Olberman is my hero. I've heard he;s a prick but who cares?
I think ESPN's actual gameday coverage of sports is good but you're right about Sportscenter. I can't remember the last time I watched it all the way through. Remember in college when we would actually watch the REPEATS of it? What happened?
Yeah, Sunday night baseball on ESPN has an atmosphere that is original and a pleasure to watch.
But Sportscenter just isn't worth my time anymore. A couple of weeks ago, I was watching and the Sportscenter anchors mispronounced three baseball players' names in the same broadcast. This is your job and you can't even get the names right?
Check out their new feature "Who's Now?" Stuart Scott had to push that one through.
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