Dear ESPN,
I came home from the bar last night and watched the end of your sister station's (ABC) coverage of the Lakers-Celtics game. Not bad. I'm a casual fan of the NBA, but this series with all it's "history" has kept me interested so far. Kudos. Anyways, the game ended and I flip over to your bread and butter program...Sportscenter to catch some highlights of...you know...sports. Well, that was a mistake. Of course you led off the coverage with the NBA game. It's the most important sporting event of the night. No arguments here. After the highlights, you started the analysis with whatever crew gets their own desk at game (Mark Jackson? Really?). I got bored and start flipping around. Sorry.
20 MINUTES later, I flip back expecting you to have moved on. Nope. More analysis and then THE most exciting thing in sports...the post game press conference! First Doc, then Phil! I could barely sit down I was so enthralled!
At this point, I'm getting a tad frustrated, so I say "F#$k it, I'll just go to ESPN News in HD!" (Yes, I talk that way to myself, sue me.) I flip to it expecting to see some stats and a loop of about 5 highlights from around sports repeated every 15 minutes and instead I get...Phil Jackson again. That's right. In your infinite wisdom, you decided to devote TWO channels to coaches answering boring questions about game 3 of the NBA finals. Not game 7. Not a classic overtime battle. Game 3.
I understand that you own the rights to the NBA Finals, so you want to give as much coverage to this series as possible, but come on. Show a baseball highlight for god sakes. Hell, I'll take Euro2008 (whatever the hell that is) over 40 minutes of guys blathering on and on about an NBA game. You don't do this for any other sport excluding the Super Bowl. And when you're coverage of the NBA Finals starts rivaling THAT coverage, you have a problem. Do you think casual sports fans give a shit what Stu Scott thought of Paul Gasol's play in the second half? Do you think we need every sequence broken down with slow motion replays so we can see every damn pick?
Maybe I'm in the minority, but with a full slate of MLB games either going on or just finishing around the time Sportscenter aired, wouldn't it be a good idea to maybe show a highlight or two of those games? I had to turn on the Best Damn Sports Show Period to get my sports fix. Seriously. I turned on a show where John Salley was involved...on purpose. Shame on you ESPN. You did this to me.
Sincerely,
J Dot
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You are not in the minority. There is nothing more annoying than the same network showing the same thing on multiple channels. Yesterday afternoon, WGN had What I Like About You on 9, 9-1, and 9-2 (though it might be in Spanish on 9-2). I like the guy from City Guys as much as the next person, but I don't need to see him on three stations (though, again, 9-2 in Spanish might have been fun).
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