I didn't have cable until I was 10. I know, I can't believe it either. Not that the 70 extra channels are that great, but there is that one channel that I desperately needed: ESPN.
For the first 10 years of my life I was limited to mainstream teams on network TV. Then, one day when I returned home from school, ESPN was on the screen. There began my addiction.
Finally I could watch other baseball games besides the Cubs or White Sox on WGN. I suddenly had a number of college football games to choose from. The biggest difference, though, was the addition of \SportsCenter"" in my life.
I used to be able to turn on ESPN and enjoy whatever was on at the time. But now things have changed. The network has given in to reality television shows and game shows that make me cringe.
It all started with the game show ""Two Minute Drill."" Yeah, the show with commercials that featured little white blobs with Q's and A's running around chanting: ""Y.A. Tittle, Y.A. Tittle, Y.A. Tittle.""
For sports nerds like myself the show was entertaining. I could try to answer the questions faster than the contestants. ESPN should have stopped there.
Then ESPN created ""Beg, Borrow and Deal,"" a combination of ""Survivor,"" ""The Amazing Race"" and ""Real World"" with a sports spin. Two teams of four had to beg their way across America while completing sports tasks and bickering along the way.
To make matters worse, they attempted a second season of the show. Yet the network did not learn its lesson.
Last year saw the premiere of ""Dream Job,"" a show which gave contestants a shot at being a ""SportsCenter"" anchor. While the show was mildly entertaining in small doses, the network ended up picking the second best candidate, Mike Hall, over Zach Selwyn. Coincidentally, Hall was the stereotypical clean-cut, generic, industry-standard anchor and Selwyn was the more entertaining, crazy-haired fanatic.
The network has recently started the second season of ""Dream Job"" and is already finding its way down the road to another stereotypical anchor, getting rid of both women finalists in the first three weeks.
While the show promises to pick the best candidate, it looks as though it will pick ""the candidate most like all of the other anchors"" once again.
But the most recent of ESPN's creations carries the name that most suits its recent programming: ""I'd Do Anything.""
Basically the premise is ""I'd do anything so that my physically inept friend/father/son can live out their sports dream."" Each contestant goes through three rounds of torture, such as mini-golfing while covered in bees, trying to return a punt by yourself against a team of pro football players or completing an obstacle course on a moving train. The one who does it best wins their less-athletic friend a chance to live out a dream.
If I wanted to watch ""Fear Factor,"" I would.
The National Spelling Bee and the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match are bad enough. Leave the game shows to the Game Show Network and reality TV to every other network. I used to turn my TV right to ESPN and watch whatever was on. Now, I'd do anything to not have to deal with obnoxious programming.
Eric is a junior planning to major in journalism. If you want him to be your partner on ""I'd Do Anything"" e-mail ejschmoldt@wisc.edu.
