SHOOTING FOR AN EVEN HUNDRED

Maybe you saw this list of 52 reasons to hate ESPN/Disney/ABC over at EDSBS. If you did, but you haven’t seen this 32-item addendum at MGoBlog, go read it. I’ll gladly wait for you.

[Jeopardy! music]

Welcome back. Those were some good lists, huh? But, sadly, they were incomplete. I think we can get up to 100, no problem.

85. “The hhhhhRRRRaaayyyduzzz.” “The New York football Giants.” Stop it. It’s not funny, not in the “I’m offended you would say that” sense, but in the “seriously, Berman, it’s not funny” sense. It’s one thing if Boomer does it, but when almost every ESPN announcer starts talking about “the New York football Giants,” it’s cultural hegemony.

86. Regional broadcast idiocy, specifically, broadcasting nothing but Big Ten football games in the Midwest, even when these games turn out to be stinking piles of compost. Meanwhile, all the good Big 12 games? We can’t see ‘em here in Wisconsin, because Michigan State and Purdue are teein’ it up. Thanks. Orson and Stranko touched on this as well; I just wanted to let them know they’re not the only ones honked off.

87. “Cheap Seats.” I’ve been anti- that show since it premiered. It’s still not funny. “Randy, we’s so ironic.” “Jason, what’s ironic?” “I dunno, Randy . . . but we’s it! Haw!”

88. Showing SportsCenter 43 times in a row instead of showing something like, I don’t know, sports. Yes, I would rather watch, say, the CFL. Or a ping-pong tournament. But please, not the World Series of Poker. SportsCenter can be pretty good, but it’s not so good that I feel terrible if I miss it. Especially since I almost always miss it, because it’s almost always terrible.

89. Jim Rome. Brian also mentioned him, but he’s so profoundly annoying, a single mention isn’t enough.

90. Duplicity in the current Michael Irvin case. Did you catch Dan Patrick’s radio interview on Monday? I did. I can understand Patrick not wanting to challenge Irvin, since he still has to work with the guy. But if you can’t close, don’t do the interview. Don’t stop short of what we all want to hear from Irvin right now. Not “would you take a drug test?” but “will you?” Good grief, even Jim Rome would’ve gotten that one right.

91. Bill Simmons. What? Look, I love the Boston Sports Guy, but I am sick to death of all the Billy Zabka, Andy Dufresne, and Brian Austin Greene references. Dude, you can write. You’ve got to be making some decent geedus these days. Buy some new DVDs, already. You’re starting to sound like that guy from high school who stopped forming new memories three days after graduation.

92. Cold Pizza. It’s not working. If it weren’t for Skip Bayless and Woody Paige’s pointless bickering, this would be content-free, personality-free television. And if there’s anything harder to take than Skip Bayless first thing in the morning, it’s Woody Paige.

93. Bringing back halftime highlights on Monday Night Football, but thinking that Tim McGraw should somehow be involved in presenting them. Oh, right–by the time we get to Monday night, we’ve already seen every highlight 43 times on SportsCenter!

94. Refusing to acknowledge that Tommy Tuberville wasn’t entirely wrong when he went off about ESPN’s influence on popular opinion. Since college football depends on popular opinion for the bulk of its evaluatory tasks (i.e., there’s no playoff), Tuberville’s charge deserved more attention than it got.

95. Firing Gregg Easterbrook and deleting every last one of his columns from the archives, thus meaning that I can never prove I actually won the TMQ Challenge in 2001. (I got a Kenny Mayne bobblehead. By the way, where did Kenny Mayne go?)

96. Page 3. Does anybody read Page 3? If so, I just have one question for you: Why?

97. Just wanna say this: POKER IS NOT A SPORT.

98. The one really good show on ESPN–”NFL Matchup”–might as well not even exist for all it’s promoted. But that’s okay, because the NFL Network’s “Playbook” has surpassed it.

99. The total failure to realize that Brad Nessler should have Mike Patrick’s job, and Mike Patrick should have Brad Nessler’s job.

100. They’re keeping a chair warm for Terrell Owens on “Monday Night Countdown.” You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.