“Da-na-na, Da-na-na”; it’s a jingle that’s so iconic you probably just hummed it to yourself as you read. When I was younger and just getting into sports, hearing that sound when I got home from school meant I got to catch up on any games or news that I missed. It meant I would hear Stuart Scott yell “Boo-Yah,” as he covered highlights. And it meant that I would see the 10 best, and worst plays from all over the sports world. As a sports junkie, I soaked it up for hours a day, watching while I ate breakfast and waited for the bus, and when I got home from practice at night.
SportsCenter is the reason why I fell in love with sports. The anchors like Chris Berman, John Anderson, Steve Levy, and Sage Steele made it more than just a part of ESPN. It became almost its own entity, and so many of us sports fans grew up watching SportsCenter all the time. I love SportsCenter, and that’s why it’s so hard for me to even write this piece because someone has to be the one to say it: SportsCenter has severely fallen off.
Maybe it’s just the era that we live in today, but when I used to think of SportsCenter, I thought of fun sports highlights and vibrant personalities, and the legendary “This is SportsCenter” commercials. Now, I think of random recycled Instagram videos that often can barely be described as being “sports-centered”. I mean no offense to Elle Duncan, Omar, and the rest of the crew at SportsCenter today, but I think I speak for all sports fans when I say that the show just isn’t the same anymore.
I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to the glory days of the show, but this SportsCenter is a shell of the innovative, fun, fast-paced sports show that helped me and millions of other fans catch up on their favorite sports, and learn a little about sports they might not have otherwise been exposed to. Now, I couldn’t even tell you if they do the iconic top-ten and not-top-ten anymore, because it’s never on their social media.
My main problem with SportsCenter today is that they’ve moved away from what made the show successful in the first place, and that might not be the people at SC’s fault. A lot of times, ESPN has even replaced it with more and more talk shows that while entertaining, often neglect to talk about anything other than basketball or football, and are so chock-full of bad takes that it’s gotten comical.
I think ESPN as a whole has lost a ton of ground as the top sports entertainment media channel with its money-hungry tendencies lately, but it’s sad to see something that I loved so much fall so far. I can’t even remember the last time I sat down and watched SportsCenter on TV, and that really sucks. Maybe I’m just being a hater, but let me know what you think down below! Is SportsCenter cooked? What can ESPN do to bring it back to what we all loved growing up?
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