Classic Rant #94 (September 23, 2009): ESPN Turns Me Off

As I previously said, I hate football (Rant #85, September 14, 2009), or more to the point, I hate all the blather that surrounds this sport, but it gets even worse during fall weekends on Saturdays.

Ever try finding a score or highlight other than college football on ESPN News during the college football season? It is an impossible task indeed.

The crawl at the bottom of the screen is supposed to supply quick summaries of games that are being played during a particular day. On Saturdays during college football season, there are literally hundreds of college football games being played.

ESPN has chosen to provide their scores at the bottom of the screen, and I do mean seemingly every one of them.

Thus, if you are looking for a baseball score during the most important part of the season, you literally have to wait for many minutes at a time before a score comes up. And if you miss the baseball scores, you are sunk, because the college football scores come up again, and you have to wait once again.

Look, I understand the popularity of college football, and for that matter, college basketball, especially in areas without major league sports. These are those areas' major league teams, so to speak, and people do follow them religiously. I do believe the vast majority of people outside of these areas follow college football because of betting and betting pools, but that is another story left for another day.

The baseball season is coming down to the wire, and not only am I interested in the Yankees, of course, but I am also interested in the other teams that will be in the postseason, including the wild card teams.

If I have to wait many minutes for the college football scores to finish their latest wave, it is ridiculous amount of time wasted.

And forget about highlights on Saturday … does ESPN play any other highlights than college football?

I think the way to get around this is for ESPN to list in the crawl about 10 games at a time, then move onto other sporting news. This way, you don’t have to wait so long if you are interested in something else.

But those shows that only talk about college football … those really have to be either pared down or removed. They go on incessantly during the weekend, and are followed up by shows looking at the NFL, which are equally as tiresome.

And no, you can’t switch to the flagship ESPN for relief, because they basically do the same “blitz.”

The whole thing is a big bore, if you ask me. And yes, the same thing happens during the college basketball season.

Again, these kids are supposed to be in college to be educated, aren't they?

Sorry, the whole thing turns me off.