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Champ, you may want to sit the next couple of plays
out
By Keith Chambers
ESPN.
What started as a little channel in Bristol, Connecticut
broadcasting SportsCenter between hours of Aussie Rules
Football back in 1979 has turned into a billion dollar
sports enterprise, with content being generated constantly
on television, in print and all over the Internet. The
face of the ESPN brand, Chris Berman, has been with
the company since its inception, starting as a reporter
out of Brown University and moving through the ranks
to anchor position on SportsCenter, Sunday NFL Countdown,
and NFL Primetime. When he shows up at a sporting event
it's usually a huge deal. The man is the sports reporting
equivalent of a rock star.
Which
is exactly why it's time for him to ride off into the
sunset, collect retirement, and never be seen on live
television again. No more having Tom Jackson as his
Andy Richter on NFL Live, no more crashing live SportsCenter
broadcasts from the Super Bowl, the World Series, or
some golf tournament. The only Boomer that should be
mentioned in sports media? Boomer Esiason, toiling in
relative obscurity for Westwood One radio broadcasts,
sometimes with Dennis Green, sometimes with Marv Albert.
I
know some people are thinking "Amen, brother"
while others just shake their heads while reading this,
another ESPN hater who is trying to discredit Bristol's
economic center from the top down. First of all, we
all know Stuart Scott is the most powerful man in Bristol
because he's at least trying to relate to the kids.
Second of all, this isn't something that came up all
of a sudden out of straight nothingness - it's been
a string of incidents over the past few years that has
set me off to this point, being capped recently by an
egregious violation of sports history, which you'll
hear more about later.
It's
been said in a few outlets that Chris Berman is a huge
jerk when it comes to signing autographs in the sports
reporting business. I'm still not sure how people who
report on famous people ever got famous, but that's
for another day. Recently, YouTube has proven he can
get a little blue at work when things don't exactly
go well for him. There were a few more videos along
the way, posted by a former ESPN employee, most of them
were a huge waste of time, until the "most recent"
video from a few years back, where Berman freely admits
to his production crew he popped four codeine laced
aspirin before broadcast, then detailed a way to get
that back stateside from Canada, capped off by a centrist
rant about how to get FROM Canada into the United States.
(First video on the site) Now, that doesn't bother me,
but like I said, it's only the first in a series of
behaviors that aren't exactly Disney friendly.
There's
a story that's been circulating around sports blogs
about how someone's friend of a friend was in this bar
in Scottsdale during spring training and had been working
on this one girl with a leather jacket all night with
his best moves and attention - you know, what normally
happens at bars - and was about to take his hope of
a one night stand to the next level when, all of a sudden,
Chris Berman walks up to the same girl, calmly states,
"You're with me, Leather," then walks off
with the girl. Now this also doesn't bother me, but
the way ESPN handled the backlash afterwards did - Neil
Everett being suspended for two weeks after using a
variation of that same line to describe a great baseball
play, as if ESPN, a network with a show (the poorly
watched and now cancelled Cheap Seats) that made fun
of ESPN/ABC early sports broadcasts, was taking steps
beyond standard operating procedures to protect Berman.
Now
we get to what really has got my goat: ESPN allowing
Berman to show, on a consistent basis, putts Berman
makes in Pro-Am tours during his Sunday Night SportsCenter
segments, which basically goes like this: Berman's got
a 14-foot putt on an easy golf course, he nails it,
adds some crowd noise, and does this ludicrous fist-pump
dance thing while at the same time, narrating his highlight
to act surprised that 1) ESPN would show something like
this and 2) the fact he's that "good." If
you dressed me up in a golf shirt, Greg Norman style
hat, terrible slacks and gave me a putter, I could make
one putt from 15 feet out of 72. I wouldn't put it on
a nationally broadcast sports show, either. Add this
to his lack of actual cultural relevance, as his nicknames
are all from the same era (about the early to mid 1980's)
and his new nicknames must use a DeLorean to get here
because they're all from way, way back in the day. Referencing
a song that hasn't been covered or resurrected in 30
years? Let me reference something that hasn't been mentioned
for a while (with good reason): Back when Dennis Miller
was doing third man duties for Monday Night Football
they had a link on ESPN.com's front page where it explained
all his obscure references to literature, history, and
mythology. If Berman keeps digging up references to
1960's television as was done on NFL Countdown more
than once this last season, ESPN may need to resurrect
that part of their unenjoyable history.
But
the most damning transgression against sports and entertainment
(Technically, the "S" and "E" of
ESPN) would have to be his current assignment where
Berman's in charge of running the Ultimate Highlight
tournament. In essence, SportsNation votes on one great,
life altering sports play against another great sports
play. These plays will always be remembered as timeless,
and just because the Miracle on Ice beats the Stanford
Band Play in the finals doesn't mean one's more memorable
than another. But the added bonus? You guessed it: Chris
Berman does the narration for the moments, as if they
happened earlier that night! Now, I'm no sports historian,
but I know the announcer of the Stanford Band Play for
the University of California's broadcast team is Joe
Kapp, and he never once during that broadcast shouted
"WHOOOOOOOOOOOP" when a lateral occurred.
Also, in the recent movie Miracle, Al Michaels (the
person who called the USA-USSR semifinal match, along
with Ken Dryden) said there was no way to ever recreate
that emotion, so they should just overdub the ending
of that specific game with the original 1980 broadcast.
Is this good enough for Berman? Absolutely not.
Berman's
confusing references to history turn the new, younger
sports generation away from his broadcasts, and his
abuses of sports history not only take up time during
a show dedicated to providing CURRENT sports information
but also ruin the moment for those who are trying to
show their children why sports are so awesome. Instead
of a kid listening to the dulcet tones of a Boston College
announcer losing his mind over how "FLUTIE DID
IT" the child covers their ears and asks "Daddy,
why is that man screaming? Didn't he go to Brown University?"
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