Be that as it may HEY LOOK A KITTY CAT.

Best Regards

John

Despite the headline, the article is really about ESPN's Outside the Lines show. OTL is one of the few remaining quality items left on ESPN.

Last time I paid any attention, Outside the Lines had devolved to an utter farce, covering such hard hitting meta-sports issues as how good a golfer Tiger Woods is.

Seriously, I'd think about changing that link title. It isn't really about LaRoche, except in passing.

I liked OTL better when it was nightly, at like 12:20. Not that I don't like it now, but I think the combination of that extra eight minutes or so and the competition in that slot makes them spend time on "current headlines" more, which is NOT why I watch the show.

That said, I haven't missed more than a handful in the past year or so. I think they generally do a very good job stepping back and examining some aspect of the sports culture that hasn't really been covered before.

I'm not a fan of Ley personally (he's kind of a dick), but he has been the driving force behind ESPN's not-yet-complete descent into annoying flavor of the month youth culture.

That makes no sense. He has been the biggest personality blocking an entirely commerce-based business model. He deserves credit.

It would be a better world if ESPN had gone the Bob Ley route instead of the Chris Berman route.

essentially saying it would be a better world had espn hardly existed.

berman, obnoxious as he is, has a solid base of fans among blue collars. i have an uncle who loves him, and i'm sure there are thousands like that.

bob ley as a spearhead would have made espn the c-span of sports, which is good and fine, if anything i'd rather that, but it certainly would mean espn's effect and the spread of sports would be a lot less.

say what you will about berman, he actually has been kinda influential..

say what you will about berman, he actually has been kinda influential..

I don't really disagree; the core of that group (which includes Gammons and Mortensen) have such unabashed passion for the sport they're dealing with that I can overlook some of their flaws. I think it's safer to peg the "Stu Scott effect" for the stuff on ESPN which is unwatchable.

Am I incorrect in my recollection that when ESPN2 first started, it was geared toward the younger, "hipper," crowd? If that is correct, I don't see why they could not have left it thw way it was. ESPN could have kept their more classic coverage of sports, which nearly every person I speak with seems to prefer, and have ESPN2 with all the Steven A. Smith type yelling and screaming coverage bringing in the younger viewer. At face value, I don't really understand the distinction between the two networks now-a-days.

Rodder, that was the original plan, and occasionally they pay lip service to it nowadays. But that distinction gets broken so often that there isn't a distinction anymore. By your logic, should PTI be put on ESPN2, with a somewhat smaller potential audience?

ESPN2 has largely been the "overflow" net recently. If there are two sports events going at the same time, an ESPN crew (there is absolutely no staffing or technical distinction between the networks) is sent there and given ESPN2 graphics to use.

well i think espn 2 was brought about in the same way that mtv 2 was brought about.

both networks were trying to devise a way to fix the problem of the overextension of their programming, which had left some of their initial shows (in espn's case traditional sports and coverage, in mtv's case actual videos) without any timeslots.

it just so happens they both misused an otherwise good idea:

espn never developed espn2 to the potential it posed -- to me they just never effectively made 'extreme' sports engaging, and so they just sort of turned espn 2 into a 'whatever doesn't work in the espn ethos goes here' sort of channel.

meanwhile mtv just did it backwards -- left all the secondary shows on mtv and turned it into a pop culture channel, put the videos on mtv2.

meanwhile mtv just did it backwards -- left all the secondary shows on mtv and turned it into a pop culture channel, put the videos on mtv2.

Except, of course, that now the Deuce carries alot of crap programming other than videos, too.

meanwhile mtv just did it backwards -- left all the secondary shows on mtv and turned it into a pop culture channel, put the videos on mtv2.

Except, of course, that now the Deuce carries alot of crap programming other than videos, too.

Which means we can expect a 3rd channel that will only play videos....for a few months.

Driving into work, I heard part of an interview on MLB Home Plate by Charlie Steiner of Curt Smith. One of the themes is what's happened to sports reporting (more from the angle of play-by-play). Smith's point was that there are still many good announcers out there, but by and large the overall quality of the baseball announcing will have to be affected by the overall quality of culture. If we live in a instant gratification culture where instant gratification comes with persons being labeled as talented for being able to yell louder and longer than another, then this will be reflected in what we hear on the radio, see on TV.

As much as most posters here prefer Vin Scully saying, "Picture in your mind's eye," we live in a world where programmers give jobs to John Kruk and Steve Lyons because they are perceived by a significant proportion of the population as talented.

There are about 11 MTVs and VH1s that play nothing but videos

I'm waiting for pop culture programming to make it's final evolution and be nothing but minute long randomly strung together sound bites for the ADD culture of today.

Like the Ben Stiller ending Reality Bites? Yeah, the satire is being caught up to.

Of all the sportswriting I've read, perhaps the greatest single sentence was in a magazine's review of the brand-new espn2:

"Sports polymath and genial dweeb Keith Olbermann in a motorcycle jacket?"

There are about 11 MTVs and VH1s that play nothing but videos


VH1 Classic runs about three hours of alt-rock music videos from the 80s-90s every Sunday, around midnight. It's one of the greatest things ever.

Every week, they'll play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" at least once.