ESPN is ruining my sports TV

I like sports. I like to watch them and even talk about them. But watching other people talk… I like sports. I like to watch them and even talk about them. But watching other people talk about sports, especially when those people are on TV? That annoys me. Maybe I’m just picky, but the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network is the only channel I enjoy watching more without sound. And the NFL season is the worst of all sports seasons for my distaste of ESPN.

Games are generally played on two days a week, yet there are seven days of airtime to fill. This causes ESPN to have in-studio shows going over the same game highlights, talking about the same plays and players, for roughly five days.

And even when the topics are new and haven’t been discussed yet, they’re not really all that new anyway. It’s the same things week after week. The same teams, same players, same annoying commentary. Yet I keep coming back, because as mentioned above, I like sports. There’s nothing else to go up against ESPN in terms of national sports coverage, although ESPN does tend to stick to a select few areas of the country more than others. There are local stations that cover local sports, but that’s not enough.

As a sports fan, you can’t avoid ESPN. It’d be like trying to go to an amusement park with a mouse mascot while trying to avoid Disney. You just can’t do it. Anyone who has tried to watch ESPN on a regular basis hoping for some sports talk knows how frustrating it is. You have to sit through minutes upon minutes of catchphrases and nicknames for seconds worth of information. I don’t have anything against a catchphrase, but I do when every sentence from an announcer’s mouth is two catchphrases connected by three nicknames.

I guess what I really mean is that I can’t watch Chris “Fumblin’, stumblin’, mumblin’, fumble!” Berman. He’s amusing at times, but those times are becoming far less frequent every week. Berman is the “Whoop!” host of “Whoop!” Sunday NFL Countdown “Whoop!” on ESPN. At this point, ESPN should just have audio of all his sayings recorded and play them accordingly, seeing as how they haven’t changed in over 20 years. Is there really a need for him to be on the set at this point? I wonder if when he meets new people and they tell him their name, he asks, “From?” hoping someone else will yell out what college the person went to. Another thing about Berman that makes football not fun is his love of Brett Favre. Well, I should make that everyone’s love of Favre. They loved him when he was great, they loved him when he was absolutely awful and they love him now when he’s playing very well. Earlier in the year, Berman claimed that “rooting for Favre is like rooting for America.” Really? He’s one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play in the NFL, but comparing him to America? That’s a bit much. I think I’d rather go back to that period of time when we were known as the country that changed French fries to Freedom fries. And I hated that period of time.

But ESPN is also good for telling us what’s wrong with sports, like Michael Vick. Without ESPN constantly telling me how horrible dogfighting is, I wouldn’t have known what to think about the Vick situation. ESPN also put on a special hour and a half town meeting on the situation, further letting the people know how wrong Vick’s actions were. No, I didn’t watch it either.

One would think that the when a referee is caught betting on games and shaving points or the best franchise in a sport is caught cheating during a game, that might warrant half the coverage of one sports star getting caught up in dogfighting. ESPN taught us that neither of those things matter in the sports world as much as dogfighting.

I understand ESPN has to take what stories are out there and try to develop them into stories that will draw in the most viewers, but they get old quickly. All of them. There isn’t one sports story that is interesting when you talk about it for a week straight with no new developments, and everyone talking about it has the exact same perspective on the topic.

I wouldn’t be opposed to changing ESPN to stand for the Exploitation and Self-Promotion Network from here on out.

If there’s one thing ESPN does that I’m a huge fan of, it’s their website. To continue this article you must be a Pitt News Insider.