A Weird Thing I Just Saw
Here is a weird thing I just saw. On this glorious Wednesday evening, after a day on the ski slopes of Western Maine, I turned on the television to see what’s what. There’s a college basketball game being played between Alabama and Arkansas at 7pm on ESPN, I thought I might tune in as the calendar approaches March. I turned the knob to ESPN minutes before the game and the folks at the famed sports station in Bristol, CT decided to treat the viewers to “SportsCenter’s Top 6 plays at 6pm”. Huh? What the fuck? 6 plays? I deserve 10, and frankly, and I don’t give a shit if it is 6pm. (I won’t mention that it wasn’t 6pm and more like 6:51pm, whatever)
I grew up on SportsCenter. Literally started my days with the program from approximately ages 8-14. Stuart Scott (RIP), Neil Everett, Stan Verrett, I knew these names better than I knew my own Mom’s phone number. This sports program was the source for an avid fan in the days before Twitter (X), Instagram, and The Athletic began to serve me my news. News that I craved like a hungry dog chained to a fence while a wild turkey’s frolicked and mocked just out of reach. The Top 10 used to mean something. It meant something to me. That’s a different blog…
Anyways, here’s the thing I saw. This Top 6 plays at 6pm bullshit popped on the screen and I immediately started hate watching with an attention akin to 9 year old me watching SportsCenter at 7am in February of 2007. Now, the Top 10 plays always had a couple handouts. Maybe the Best In Show at the Westminster Dog Show, or a high school buzzer beater to win the State Championship, even a Sunday League bicycle kick from a muddy pitch in Chelmsford, United Kingdom. But what I witnessed today was something I still haven’t wrapped my tiny mind around.
All 6 plays were from a game of soccer (football). ALL 6! We saw goals from the Premier League or maybe the FA Cup, the Champion’s League, and the Women’s Champion’s League. I repeat, in perhaps an ungrammatical manner: all 6 plays were soccer. All 6! And I like soccer!
I know we are in a bit of a sports desert. No football, spring training is active but dull, the NHL is on an Olympic break, and the NBA comes back tomorrow from the All Start break. But, um, isn’t The Olympics still chugging along? Isn’t college basketball reaching a fever pitch? College baseball and softball are active. Even give me a gaggle of college lacrosse players shoveling off their field turf to get a game in!
We can’t be this boring @ESPN. And to make it worse, not all 6 plays were that exceptional! A shot deflected off a defenders head, and oh wow someone deflected a well placed cross out of the keeper’s reach. Frankly, I was astonished at the gaul of the producers in Bristol. 6 plays at 6pm from the same sport. They’ve thrown in the towel, and not in an admirable way. They know that nobody’s watching. But what they don’t seem to know, is that I am watching!
I will be tuning in every weekday at 6pm to see if a trend of any sort develops. We deserve more as cable watching consumers of sports content. I will not only die on this hill, I want to be buried on it.
P.S. By the time I have finished typing this the Bama v. Arkansas game is 29-23 with 10 minutes left in the first. I haven’t seen one ball go through the basket, but I’m positive that at least 3 plays would crack this “Top 6 at 6pm” abomination.
P.S.S. The analyst just said, “They need his big body pounding on the inside.” That’s a top play right there!
