Sportscenter Review and Breakdown

ESPN started as the half-witted brainchild of former sportscast Bill Rasmussen in 1978. The idea of a total sports network seemed to be farfetched to a number of people, but on September 7, 1979 ESPN debuted. The flagship show of the network is clearly SportsCenter.

The hour-long show runs once at 6 PM CST once at 1AM CST and then goes on a marathon from 5AM-Noon CST, which makes for nine hours of SportsCenter everyday. That all started from some basic sportscast which only lasted 30 minutes when it first started in 1979.

Now a days the show is locally produced in seven different countries outside of the United States including Brazil, Canada, China, India, Latin America and Taiwan. These local broadcasts reach over 60 countries and are watched by approximately 85 million households.

ESPN has also stretched itself into ESPN2, the place where they put lesser sports on, ESPN Classic, old classic sports go here, ESPNNEWS, the day's sporting news is on here kind of like a continuous SportsCenter, ESPNU, the new network devoted to college sports, ESPN.com, the networks official website with all the sporting news and columns that anyone could ask for, and ESPN Radio, which is all sports-talk radio all the time.

The current SportsCenter show is a trendsetter in popular culture. Most anchors are all about having clever sayings that will make you laugh or just finding humorous. Some purists will argue that there is very little substance in the show, which I believe, is true. That commentary usually gets a laugh out of me, which is one of the reasons I watch it. If I just wanted to get scores and stats I can go and look at the newspaper, but I want something that will entertain me.

Therefore, in this there will be an in-depth look at how much substance is involved in the show. In addition, a number of people find the personalities on the show annoying. It is true it does seem like there are some anchors that try a little too hard, but those are usually the inexperienced rookies. The great thing about the show is that all the anchors really seem like they enjoy their jobs and genuinely want to be there.

They all strike me as the type of people that will leave the set sit down and start talking about the same sports they just reported. For some reason sports has a way of getting into people's blood.

The show that will be analyzed is the April 17, 2005, 1AM airing of SportsCenter. It was hosted by Steve Berthiaume and Michelle Bonner, who are the weekend anchors. There are also a number of expert analysts that have their own little segment of the show where they breakdown an event(s) in their area of choice.

One of the criticisms that many people have had over the years about SportsCenter is that they do too much cross promoting. Which is not a bad idea for ESPN since it is the most watched show on the network since it is on nine hours a day. The downfall of that is sometimes they will lead with an unexciting event since it was on one of their networks that day. In this edition, it was one of those instances.

ESPN had carried the 115-87 Denver Nuggets embarrassment by the hands of the Houston Rockets. Obviously, the network felt compelled to lead the entire newscast with this laugher of a basketball game. There is no way that there were not any better games to report on. The show devotes an entire three minutes to the contest and even has Tom Tolbert, who was the color commentator for the game, come in and give his break down of the game.

The next game they show is also another laugher of a game, this time the San Antonio Spurs beat the Memphis Grizzlies 97-75. This game did make some sense to have early in the show, since it had such big playoff implications. They also had the opportunity to use some cool graphics to show and footage from the last few Grizzlies games to show their ineptitude to clinch the eighth and final spot in the Western Conference Playoffs.

One of the things that I do find to be helpful to the viewer is that at the end of every segment, before they go to commercial, they tease what they will be talking about on the other side of the commercial. If the viewer doesn't want to watch what is on the other side of the commercial then they can always go watch something else and come back later.

All of the commercials are geared towards the male demographic. So all the beer, girly and deodorant commercials will be seen during the breaks in SportsCenter. I don't mind the commercials at all.

Coming out of the first bombardment of everything that has to do with testosterone SportsCenter gives us two baseball games that were actually well contested. The thing that wasn't very great about the two games was that they seemed rushed and I didn't get a chance to catch any of the stats that they were throwing at me.

Right after that they pull back to Steve Berthiaume standing next to a screen and he gives us a little bit of background information about the Red Sox usher that jumped in between Gary Sheffield and the Red Sox fan that allegedly punched him in the face while he was trying to make a play on a ball against the wall. It was a great piece of information that might not have been found anywhere else and it makes for a good lead into the game they played on that night against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The next thing they show is another lead-in this time from the D'Rays view. They have a quote from their starting pitcher, which would've been great, if they didn't just have a short back-story on the game. There were too many side stories in this highlight. It would've been a great deal better if they just would have chosen one and gone with it.

They go with another couple of baseball games and then change cylinders and go to the NFL Draft. The lead in was actually pretty good. Berthiaume goes into what Bill Walsh, the 49ers, who have the number one pick, draft consultant and former coach, thinks about picking a quarterback with the first pick. It then goes into how players don't have to be chosen number one to be great players in the NFL.

They go into great picks at the number 11 spot, great number 43 picks and then late round picks. The segment is finished off with a graphic of Mel Kiper Jr.'s ranking of the top five prospects in the draft. Mel Kiper Jr. is an expert in scouting and all things college football and NFL Draft.

I have noticed two things about these anchors to this point. Both of them seem to be rather inexperienced and they aren't trying to be incredibly funny. I kind of like the fact that they aren't overly trying to be funny and just bombing on their ridiculous jokes. They are in the mold of the old school sportscasters that just give you the sports and mix in a joke or a quip every now and then. Neither one of these anchors would ever be confused with a comedian or even someone that is always making people laugh.

At the midway point of the show, they do something that is insanely stupid to me. They go and do a recap of the first part of the show. I understand that some people might have missed it, but it was all of 30 seconds. It just looked like they needed a filler to keep everything running smoothly. The worst part of the recap is the only story they recapped was the Spurs-Grizzlies game. As I said before I don't understand why they would put that right there. The only legitimate reason was that they were running short and needed to slow their show down 30 seconds or they had meant to push it further and cut it short due to not enough time.

After that, they show some more baseball and get into how the New York Mets have been winning. They have Steve Phillips, the Mets former GM; come on to talk about what it is that has given them a spark. He proceeds to say that it's because of the pitchers pitching better and the hitters hitting better. C'mon!!! How could you have an "expert" come on the air to say something that is evident to the entire world!? This is the first time all show that I have actually gotten upset at one of the experts that come on and break down an event further than the little highlight. That's just plain dumb.

After that, they get into another shameless plug on their other programming. ESPN2 covered the University of South Carolina intersquad football game. "Why?" do ask they would be coving that. It's because the Ol' Ball Coach Steve Spurrier is the new head coach of their football team. It frustrates me to see another shameless plug of something that was on one of their networks. I don't think that anyone outside of the state of South Carolina or family of the players or coaches actually really cared.

I've made a couple of conclusions about SportsCenter. The first is that they shamelessly put in programming of their own in before they put in anything else, even if it isn't as good as the other events going on that night. The anchors can tone down the jokes and still do a good job entertaining. The final conclusion I've made about SportsCenter is that some of their "experts" aren't any better than you or me. So be sure and catch one hour of the nine that are on everyday and I promise you won't be disappointed… well not too bad at least.