Comedy with my highlights please

By: Gabe Gilson

A couple weeks ago, everybody’s favorite ESPN show SportsCenter decided to make a slight change in the morning. In order to cover more breaking news, the hour long broadcast went from replaying for several hours the broadcast taped in the early morning to going on live for four hours in the morning.

Good idea SportsCenter. Poor execution though.

SportsCenter has many full-time and part-time anchors on the show. Some anchors are obviously better than others. The morning anchors (more well-known as the ones that I have to put up with) have been disappointing in the way they deliver the highlights.
Josh Elliot and Hannah Storm are the two that most often show up on the television screen in the morning. If it were not for Elliot’s ability to save Storm when she cannot think of anything to say during a highlight, which is too often, I would have to get my sports news elsewhere.

Both Elliot and Storm have amazing resumes at sportscenter.com. However, after watching critically one of their live broadcasts, one may start to assume that Storm was either a first-timer on live television, never been to an actual live sporting game of any sort, or just graduated from the 8th grade.

Maybe, just maybe, Storm was not meant for the live broadcast and would do better in a taped atmosphere. SportsCenter has many brilliant anchors that have a certain flow with how they speak that is easy to follow. Scott Van Pelt, Steve Levy, Linda Cohn, and John Anderson could make a boring highlight into something you talk to your friends about the next day just by their delivery alone. People most certainly talk about Hannah Storm’s highlights the next day, but
sadly, for her, more in a negative way.

Or maybe it is just the fact that I grew up in the Kenny Mayne, Dan Patrick era of SportsCenter. When hearing those guys do their broadcasts, I might as well have been listening to a regular Daniel Tosh routine. Hearing people like Stuart Scott yell “BOO-YA” early in the morning gave you that extra kick to start the day. SportsCenter is too far removed from having comedians like Craig Kilborn do the show.

Hannah Storm might be excellent for a television show like The View, or any other show that the 18-35 year old male demographic would never turn on. But for SportsCenter, us guys in that demographic want some pizzazz when seeing how the Cubs did in the game that went into extra innings; some fluidity when hearing about the shootout with the Eagles and Cowboys; and most importantly, some humor when watching those Clipper highlights. ESPN, is this too much to ask?