Trust me, I’d rather listen to a greatest hits album of Tim McCarver’s old soliloquies about Derek Jeter or be forced to endure Erin Andrews’s cringe-inducing “she rich rich” car commercial on an endless loop than watch more than 10 minutes of one of those various embrace-debate sports shows.
Most of these shows, which populate ESPN’s channels and Fox Sports 1 during weekday afternoons, are the equivalent of the worst of sports radio, but with cameras, so we watch a banshee in a Brooks Brothers coat shriek nonsense about the likes of LeBron James as well as hear it.
What’s that? Why yes, I did have Skip Bayless in mind there. I blame “Cold Pizza” for him. He was just a soulless hack of a sportswriter before ESPN put him on that long-gone show, and no, it does not take one to know one.
So, I suppose this qualifies as a confession. There’s one of these shows I like. Love, actually. I’m talking about the one day a week when Chris “Mad Dog” Russo joins Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take.”
