It’s over. Sadly, I must sever my lifelong, faithful and fruitful relationship with my first true love, ESPN. We had our good – remember the Keith Olbermann days? – and bad – why is Stuart Scott constantly looking at me and the door to my immediate right simultaneously? But inevitably all things must come to an end.
The same network that brought you the National Spelling Bee, the World Paintball Championships, World Sumo Wrestling and the World Series of Poker – which in turn spawned an entire new generation of degenerate gamblers betting themselves into terminal poverty – has sunk to an all-time low with its decision to televise the Ohio State vs. Indiana game exclusively on its newest network, ESPNU.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching 12-year-olds smarter than myself spelling words I could never even hope to pronounce, or two grotesquely obese men in undersized diapers hugging. It’s just that on a Saturday, in October, I would much rather watch my favorite team play an actual sport.
Simply because cable providers have been hesitant to purchase the rights to carry ESPNU and add to what already seems like an infinite number of stations, for the first time in 109 games, the Buckeyes will not be televised live locally. For those of you keeping score at home, that is roughly 2.6 million cases of Natty Light consumed, 314 couches burned, 16 cars overturned, one former cheerleader with a murderous case of road rage and one National Championship. In other words, a very long time. As a matter of fact, you have to go all the way back to Nov. 8, 1997, – a 31-3 beating of Wisconsin by OSU – to find the last time an OSU game was not televised live locally.
ESPN, which is owned by the Disney Corporation, is simply exerting their will on cable outlets and using the Buckeyes as their hostage. Which is shameful, but exactly what I expect from the network that went from “Worldwide Leader in Sports” to a network filled with pompous ex-jocks-that-couldn’t-cut-it filling my airwaves with much controversy and very little, if any, knowledge. Paging Mark May.
Of the three local cable providers in Central Ohio – Time Warner, WOW and Insight – only Insight makes ESPNU available to its 216,000 subscribers, of which an estimated 40 percent actually have the all-college sports channel. This will leave many loyalists scrambling to their nearest bar, home of a friend with a satellite dish, or just plain sh-t out of luck.
This, however, is not even the most major of atrocities committed against the Buckeyes by ESPN. There was the Maurice Clarett magazine cover and the ensuing controversy perpetuated and sustained by the network, the talking heads, day after day, reaching for some reason to criticize Jim Tressel and his entire program. And who can forget, worst of all, Nick Lachey and Desmond Howard, part of the College GameDay crew, singing Hail to the Victors from atop the Horseshoe last year? The decision to deprive hundreds-of-thousands of faithful followers an opportunity to watch their team in the middle of what could be another National Championship run for a cheap and disgraceful marketing ploy is unacceptable. That is why ESPN and I must part ways. This is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
So good-bye ESPN. If you’ll excuse me I need to go watch Sports Center … er … The Best Damn Sports Show Period.
Dustin Ensinger is a senior in journalism and political science and can be reached by Mark May at [email protected].
