Top Five: Sports that shouldn’t be on TV

We’ve all done it. Its happened to every sports fan. You turn the TV on and wait for it to warm up and when it finally does you have to double check that the channel is ESPN and not some new C-SPAN-MSNBC hybrid channel. ESPN has had a bad habit as of late of putting random nonsense on espn, espn2, espnews, espn classic, etc. all at the same time. When this occurs, at least one of these 5 sports are on 1 or more of the aforementioned channels. This is my list of sports that should not under any circumstances be shown in their entirety on ESPN or any sports network for that matter.

5. NASCAR - Before you get all upset that I put NASCAR on this list I just want you to remember that I at least consider it a sport. I won’t go as far to say that NASCAR isn’t a sport, but I will say that it shouldn’t be on television. I don’t care how fast they are going or how much somebody likes a driver; there is no reason to watch cars driving in an oval for 3+ hours - none whatsoever. It doesn’t even matter that they now have packages on DirecTV that let you listen to the drivers radio channel. It doesn’t matter that they have cameras in the front of the car so you see what the driver is seeing. The only things I enjoy about NASCAR (which I can watch on SportsCenter and cut out the 500 laps) are: Drivers complaining about tires, Accidents (not because of injuries), driver fights (especially with HELMETS ON), back flips off of cars, milk drinking, and some redneck talking about the difference between Dodge, Toyota, Ford, Chevy and whatever other companies make the cars. Wait I don’t really enjoy that last part but I do get a great deal of it on ESPN.

4. Bowling - I’ll preface this selection by saying that I love bowling. I am a pretty good bowling myself (My highest score ever is 243). What I can’t stand is watching bowling on TV and what I REALLY can’t stand are bowling commercials. If you’d like to waste 30 seconds of your life watching something that will make you want to break something, be my guest - just remember, you cant get this time back. Watching bowling might be the most boring thing ever. There are only so many things that can happen when someone rolls a 13 pound ball down a flat stretch of wood with 10 upright pins on the other end. Its exciting when you are bowling and you get a strike but its not exciting when a professional bowling who makes a living by bowling gets a strike. There is no reason for them to be as excited as they do get because like I said, ITS THEIR JOB. The only bowling on TV that is worth watching are the skills competitions. Those are at least moderately entertaining.

3.Billiards - Pool on tv. Much like bowling, the only pool that is worth watching on tv is when they do the trick shots competition. Other than that… who really cares? There is one female 9 ball payer that anyone who has ESPN in their cable package definitely would recognize anywhere - Allison Fisher.

And after looking at this picture, you will notice that a) she’s using a bridge (pretty impressive for a pro huh?) and b) there is definitely not a ball within striking distance based on her setup. The reason we all recognize her is because every Saturday afternoon after college football season, she is absolutely dominating airtime on every single ESPN network. Its gotta be some title 9 crap that there has to be a certain amount of womens athletics on tv.

2.Poker - Ok poker did take over America for about 3 years and this was due to the World Series of Poker being broadcast on ESPN and the travel channel of all places broadcasting all sorts of poker tournaments. Poker chip sets and cheap poker tables started popping up EVERYWHERE. I was fully engulfed in this poker frenzy. I built a table with my dad with real felt and leather handrails and everything. I bought a set of chips off of a discount poker site online. My friends and I played poker once a week over the summer.

Then ESPN started getting gay about their coverage of poker. They record the WSOP tournament and then edit it and add commentary and then show it to the public a month or two after the event takes place. Even though it would be really bad for viewers to know who won the tournament considering that is the whole suspense factor, ESPN actually started doing “highlights” on SportsCenter and announced the winner of the tournament. And now, the poker craze has died down. Nobody really cares about poker anymore like they did 2 or 3 years ago but there are tons of poker broadcasts (even some in HD, I thank God for that, it was driving me crazy when I couldn’t see every detail in the pattern on the back of the cards). The poker players these days look like NASCAR drivers wearing the logos of online poker websites.

1c. - Cup stacking - Please ESPN, I’m begging you, stop putting 12 year olds on national television competing in “Sport Stacking”. I don’t think anyone that turns on their TV ever really wants to watch this crap. I can guarantee that the first time one sees this on tv their initial reaction is “Wow this is awesome they can stack cups faster than I could imagine”. But 45 seconds later they are saying to themselves, “Wait why is this even on TV. There is no reason for me to see 50 teams stack 25 cups as fast as they can over and over and over again.” And they are right. There is no reason for this to be on ESPN.

1b. - Darts - No words can describe ones disappointment when I turn on the TV hoping to watch some type of actual sporting event and FSN is showing a dart tournament. Seriously why would anyone want to watch darts on tv. Have the people deciding to broadcast this ever been to a party with a dartboard. There are usually two people playing darts against one another while nobody, I mean nobody else is watching at all. If you wouldn’t watch your friends play darts why would you watch two fat Europeans on TV throw three darts, scurry over to the dart board to pull their darts out, scurry back behind their opponent who does the same thing.

1a. Video Games - This really shouldn’t even be an issue. The point of video games is to allow the people watching the screen to be able to use a controller to perform some action on the screen. ESPN decided it would be cool to have a show called Madden Nation. Its a show that follows 8 “gamers” around playing madden. These “gamers” are apparently required to wear a XXXL jersey and a fitted cap and must have their ears pierced. They don’t really have any other skills in life and because of this, ESPN offers a $100,000 prize for the winner. Here’s a teaser in case you are dying to watch the show (No this isn’t a parody, the show is this stupid). I would be willing to be a lot of money that 90 percent of the people that watch this show have at least 1 gaming console in their own home. People that don’t play video games wouldn’t want to watch some lunatics playing each other and I still don’t know why the people that do watch the show would rather watch a bunch of idiots play instead of playing the video games themselves. And its only a matter of time before Halo 3 tournaments are being broadcast on ESPN. Major League Gaming (MLG) has its own ESPN top 10 plays online (don’t watch if you don’t want to laugh hysterically) and like I said earlier, don’t be surprised to see ESPN start to cover video games more and more.

And there you have it; My top 5 ( ok 7) sports that shouldnt be on tv. I ended up deciding that the last three listed are receive the same approval rating in my brain when I find that they are on my television set.

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