This past Sunday, as has been the case every single NFL Sunday since ESPN changed its programming, I felt a void from the time the last afternoon game ended until the Sunday night game began. I still fondly look back on my teenage years to early Sunday evening, when I'd tune to ESPN for NFL Primetime. Sure, the NFL Network has highlights and NBC has Football Night in America. But the other shows just feel like knock-offs, and frankly, are quite inferior. I don't want to hear 25 different analysts tell me about what happened and what's going to happen. Just show me what happened. Primetime did that.
NFL Primetime, despite the played-out act of Chris Berman, was the best there will ever be. In the 45 minutes or so they were on the air, I'll estimate roughly 38 minutes were just pure game highlights of the Sunday action. After each highlight package concluded, Tom Jackson -- and Tom Jackson alone, not a huddle of six former NFL players, coaches and a comedian-wannabe -- said a few words about the direction of each team.
For some reason, ESPN made the decision to still use the classic Jackson-Berman combo during Sunday SportsCenter in a few segments. They call it, "The Blitz." The segments are dispersed throughout SportsCenter, the highlight packages are shorter and they don't show highlights from every game. It's basically Primetime without having it's own time slot. And honestly, it sucks. It's a tease. It's like only allowing us to watch the second and third quarter of a big game and then flipping over to women's tennis during the fourth quarter. NBC does have some kind of exclusivity rights during this time-frame, but there has to be a way around it via some sort of technicality.
During the fall, the only thing most sports fans in America care about is football. Competing networks have football-only highlights shows during this time frame. ESPN had the best and original football-only highlight show from 7-8 PM ET. Now, with the Sunday night game not starting until 8:30, they could either have a half-hour SportsCenter with an hour of Primetime or an hour and a half of Primetime (good God would that rule). Instead, they stretch SportsCenter to 90 minutes, and you can never be sure if you are gonna get football highlights or European soccer highlights when flipping channels. Someone please explain the logic in this? You have a superior product and alter it and make it worse in the process.
This is one man's request: please bring back NFL Primetime. With one caveat: forbid Chris Berman from ever making that stupid "WHOOP" sound again. Ever. Other than that, please, ESPN, keep the show how it was. There's no reason to mess with success.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NBC has exclusivity on highlights during that time period. ESPN couldn't bring back the show if they wanted.
Awww, i have been beggin for the same thing for the last several years since they removed Primetime. I use to love Bermans rhyming of players names...but more importantly, you got complete highlights of games u may have missed. I thought i was the only one who missed that show. And, i totally agree that if u tune into Sports Center u dont kno if u r going to get football highlights, or poker highlights. AAugh.