What Happened Sportscenter?

Sportscenter used to be a daily necessity; I would watch it before school every morning while I got ready and watched it every night before I went to bed. I even remember in high school my youth group had a prayer meeting before school on Monday mornings. All the guys who got there early would huddle around the TV and watch Sportscenter; not only was it Sportscenter but it was a re-run of the Sunday Night Sportscenter which was special because it was an hour long, they had a Sunday Night Conversation, and of course the Plays of the Week. But now I avoid Sportscenter like the plague.

Where are the highlights?
It should be pretty simple. Sportscenter is a show that informs us about what happened in that day of sports so it would make sense to show us all the highlights of all the games. But they can't even get the simplest thing right. First of all Sportscenter has become a talk show. In an hour episode of Sportscenter you'll now get about forty minutes of the show discussing what happened in a game and what it means blah, blah, blah. Sorry, but I'd rather see the highlights of all the games. Especially since they talk about just one or two games and nothing else gets noticed. If you played on Monday night, forget about it. The one NFL game on Monday night will get more air time than every other sport combined. On the rare occasion that they show highlights of your game they're not going to show much.

The other day South Carolina nearly had an upset win over fourth ranked Florida. It was a great game that Florida survived by blocking three field goals. How many highlights did Sportscenter show? One. They showed the last blocked punt and said "Florida pulls it out 17 - 16." That's it? One of the top five teams in the nation nearly got upset but won on three blocked field goals and you show one play and don't even explain what happened? How often are there even three blocked field goals in one game? Maybe if they didn't talk about Terrell Owens for half an hour or talk about Michigan vs. Ohio State every week seven weeks in advance then you'd have time to show highlights of important games. I realize that the NFL is the most popular sport but I doubt anybody is tuning into Sportscenter thinking "I'm going to watch Sportscenter because of their great NFL coverage." They're tuning into Sportscenter because it's Sportscenter! You can show an equal amount of NFL and College games. You can show hockey and tennis highlights. I really doubt anybody is going to change the channel if you added more sports in fact you might just attract more fans. Also I'm tired of seeing just highlights of Lebron James scoring 40 points only to find out his team lost 98 - 92. Why not show some highlights of the team that actually won the game?

Top 42 plays
Like I said earlier the Sunday Night Sportscenter felt special because they showed the plays of the week. Now the top plays Sportscenter show are jokes. First of all they always call it a Top 10 plays, but never show ten actual plays. Sometimes an event makes the list like they'll say "and the number one play is the Boston Marathon." What? That's not a play. Sometimes they'll pick a game as one of their top plays. What? That's not a play that's a series of a ton of plays. Once I counted how many plays they actually showed in the Top 10 plays that night and they showed 42 plays! Can they not count at ESPN? Second of all their choices of top plays are lame. Dunking when nobody is guarding you is not impressive anymore. Hitting a home run is impressive but unless it goes extremely far or is a big situation then it's not any different than about 50 other plays that night. The top plays also don't seem all that important anymore because they do them every single day, even if there aren't 10 plays worth being on the list that day.

Booyah!
I try not ever to say I hate someone because hate is a very strong word; you should never hate anyone. But it's hard not to hate Chris Berman. Not only is he the worst sportscaster to ever walk the planet but he started the trend of using catch phrases; a trend that has ruined Sportscenter. Sure back in the day Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick had some good catch phrases but they were actually good sportscasters who added catchphrases. Today's sportscasters just sit down and write an endless string of catchphrases and then recite them on the air. If I'm sitting there watching Sportscenter and the sportscaster says "Booyah! Aloha means goodbye. See the three, be the three! Back, back, back, rumblin, stumbling" then I don't know what's going on! Sure I've got eyes I can see the guy just hit a three pointer. But did he tie the game? Did they take the lead? Did he just score 30 points? Did he just break a record? I don't need to hear your creative writing abilities, go write for the webpage if you want to write, I want to hear what's happening in the game!

The Hot Seat
Is there any bigger joke than the Hot Seat? The Hot Seat is this interview segment they do on Sportscenter. They put the interviewee in a chair and dim the lights like in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to make it all suspenseful. Then ESPN hypes it big time saying they're going to ask all the tough burning questions that nobody dares to ask. Then they'll ask the question, "Duuhh…T.O. what's your favorite color? *GASP* It's blue!" Really interviewing 90% of athletes is pointless they're not going to say anything. They're going to either be political or say something cliché. Just scrap the interviewing all together and show us more highlights.

6:30 Sportscenter
Is anything more useless than the 6:30 edition of Sportscenter? They don't show highlights from the previous night and most of the time nothing has happened yet that day. So the 6:30 edition of Sportscenter doesn't have any highlights! It's just one continuous series of true or false questions to Sportscenter's various experts. To make matters even worse this edition is actually longer than the regular Sportscenter. That makes no sense! Hey this show has the least amount of stuff on it let's drag it out longer than all the other shows.

Gimmicks
Not only do they do way too much talking about stuff with their "experts" but it always has to have a gimmick. They can't just ask a guy four questions they have to call it four downs and make each question a down. They can't just tell how they feel about a team they have to play the "Contender or Pretender" game. It's like every expert who comes on Sportscenter is playing a game show.

We've all seen one of our favorite TV shows turn into a mediocre program. I've sat as Alias went from an exciting show with lots of twists to "which one of Sydney's long lost family members is showing up this episode". I watched a couple season of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory hardly talked to each other, which was what made the show good in the first place. And currently one of my favorite shows Veronica Mars has dipped into mediocrity too. But nothing pains me more than the fall of Sportscenter. I never watch Sportscenter now. If I want a score I go to the internet and I avoid ESPN.com because it's a horrible webpage that deserves another whole article.