Every sports fan I know keeps a running tally in his or her head of things that their children or grandchildren will never get to witness for themselves.
Like watching a home run sail over the fence without wondering about the sale price of the performance-enhancing drugs the batter's probably on. Or seeing a professional hockey game that went into overtime and didn't end with some goofy skills competition. Like having actually witnessed a Montreal Expos, Hartford Whalers, or Los Angeles Rams game, or rooting for college athletic programs with Native American mascots playing in bowl games that were strictly named after fruit and flowers.
My list begins and ends with televised sports. I know my kid will be watching games that will be indivisible in their presentation from their video game counterparts. I know my kid won't understand that there was a time when you didn't have the opportunity to watch every game on every night from the comfort of your home, through the magic of a little dish on the roof pointed at the sky. And I won't even try to explain to my kid that ESPN's "SportsCenter" once looked like this:
The "Anchorman" and "SportsCenter" references are completely intentional, because there's another thing I'm getting the feeling my future-kid's going to miss out on:
The iconic 11 PM nightly news sportscaster.
I'm not talking about these blow-dried, Ken doll, homogenous wannabes that drop dated pop culture references during Div. I women's basketball highlights in the hopes that, one day, the 17 people ahead of them for the weekend "SportsCenter" chair all simultaneously come down with the norovirus.
No, I'm talking about guys like Champ Kind of the Channel Four News Team — overexcited men with bad hair, loud sport jackets, and awesome names, whose only aims are to shout out hokey catchphrases like "WHAMMY!" and show highlights of waterskiing squirrels.
Growing up in Jersey, I had sportscasters like Warner Wolf on Channel 2, he of the famous "let's go to the video tape!" segue; Len Berman of Channel 4, whose "Spanning the World" highlights package (narrated by Don Pardo, naturally) would piece together everything from Morganna the Kissing Bandit sightings to fiery drag racing crashes in which (altogether now) "No one was hurt!"; and Russ Salzberg of Channel 9, who didn't have any of the folksy shtick of the other two, but came across like a dude from the old neighborhood that had the Mets yearbook committed to memory. And he also had some truly awful sweaters, like a 5-year-old had chewed up and thrown up a box of Crayolas on something the Salvation Army rejected.
I thought about all of them this week as a true pioneer in the industry said goodbye to his nightly gig on Channel 4 in Washington, D.C. — George Michael, who also hosted that weekend highlight reel called "The George Michael Sports Machine."
Michael was the quintessential 11 PM sportscaster: Bad hair, bad tan, awful jokes, and an overwhelming and undeniable passion for both the local sports scene and for his position at the top of the local news food chain. For 27 years, he delivered Redskins wins (and more than a few losses), covered the Bullets/Wizards and the college hoops assortment, and even occasionally ran a hockey highlight or two if there wasn't some NASCAR or golf news that trumped it. He was consistently engaging, whether he was offering an obscure highlight from the night's action or bantering with his longtime new anchor.
Susan O'Malley, president of the Wizards, told The Washington Post that Michael pioneered many of the techniques used on "SportsCenter." "Maybe he was even the first MTV because he put stuff to music before anyone else did," she said.
While I wouldn't go that far, he was an idol in a way that so few sportscasters are today, and was given an amazing amount of time and flexibility to continue his singular brand of infotainment.
So why did he quit? Money. After NBC Universal decided to slash and burn local news budgets, Michaels discovered much of his staff had been cut; he declined to sign a new deal last November.
While Michaels will continue in several capacities on local television, none of them will have the daily impact of the king holding court before Jay Leno comes on. It's part of a national trend: Iconic sports broadcasters are becoming extinct, just like the dinosaurs that came before them.
Part of it is the money, as the veterans in this group can command top dollar in a media environment that demands frugality. All of that money now seems dog-eared for the local meteorologist, whose segments eat further and further into what was once a sportscasters' haven.
Part of it is a titanic shift in the sports media over the last two decades. Radio, ESPN, ESPNNews, local cable all-sports stations and the Internet have increased the availability of breaking sports news to the point of saturation. It's possible that a viewer will have watched a game, watched a postgame show, watched highlights from the game, listened to player interviews on the radio, and read a complete game story on the web before the nightly news even begins. (Hell, even the waterskiing squirrels are on YouTube nowadays.) The era of exclusivity for local sportscasters is gone, as are the days when their commentaries about sports were like sermons from a bully pulpit.
So with the impact of these sports anchors muted, the need for the catch-phrase spewing, 27-year veteran in the garish sports coat has dramatically decreased. The new breed is younger, ESPN-friendly and in some cases (gasp!), even female. (A development I'm sure Champ Kind of the Channel Four News Team would not take a liking to.)
Some may see their demise as another casualty of our fragmented media. But I see it as yet another signpost on sports' one-way trip to tedium.
Call me old-school, but I'll take hokey homerism over "SportsCenter" cynicism any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
"WHAMMY!"
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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