These Guys Could Screw Up a Peanut Butter Sandwich

Like my more frequently contributing friend Mr. Simspon, I am targeting ESPN a bit too much these days, but I'd like to register another gripe. Last night while flipping around for an alternative to Cubs/Brewers and A's/O's, I saw that ESPN was airing the 25 best sports commercials over the past 25 years. Sounded intriguing. The intro showed bits of a slew of great ones from the Mean Joe Coke ad to Miller Lite spots of the late 70's to the in-house SportsCenter commercial where Charley Steiner hollers "Follow me to freedom!" How could they possibly mess this up?

They did. 25 30-second spots means 13.5 minutes of re-running the ads plus half an hour of commentary and 20 minutes of their own sponsors, right? Yeah, except for the re-running the ads. Instead of showing the series of TV spots in their original form, they hacked them up montage-style and aired bits and pieces interspersed with comments from athletes, sports personalities, and comedians. None of them appeared in its original form. Some of them did not appear at all, presumably due to licensing issues. A few of the cuts eradicated the best part. Example: I'm not the hugest fan of the Bud ad where the Clydesdales play football, but it was interesting enough. The funny part was the end -- the two cowboys watching, one of whom asks if they always do that and the other says that no, they usually go for two. Not shown.

They further mangled the show with a bit of MTV flair, introducing each entry with a guy in a tux shouting out what year the ad was released with a banner to match, and having a breathy, faceless young lady call out the number, followed by a graphic of a famous jersey with that number. The quick cuts and time-wasting fluff fall right in line with the metamorphosis of this network, more in a long line of "if you'd just show the content straight through, we might actually enjoy it."

I don't know if they weren't permitted to show the ads in their entirety, maybe not. I know for the ones they didn't air at all, maybe they should have just dropped them from the list. Bo Jackson talking about Terry Tate, office linebacker, is no substitute for actually seeing the piece. And if they weren't licensed to air the hacked-up ones in their original length, then this was a futile effort that should have been nuked in the drawing room. If they chose to muddle it up on their own, however, I don't even know what to say.