Does ANYONE Care About This "Greatest Highlight" Crap on ESPN?

I have to ask... and I know it's February and it's considered a slow sports month, BUT....

When I turn on the 11 PM Eastern Sportscenter expecting to see highlights of my beloved Purdue's victory over MSU as well as other college basketball highlights and maybe a feature about pitchers and catchers reporting for Spring Training, WHY must I be subjected to:

...and ALSO, coming up, Chris Berman will talk about a stupid play from 1982 between two meaningless, insignificant college football programs (Cal and Stanford) and this wild and wacky play that, really, kind of sucked and the officials totally effed up since there were like, at least, two forward passes and at least one guy was down.

I mean, seriously... what is the point of all of this? Weren't these "highlights" created to show us what happened in the games that day? Not to live on for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years. And how bigger-than-its-britches has ESPN gotten now? They actually want us to vote for the best highlights?? Not the best plays ever... no, the best highlights. If that's the case, can't we vote for one where someone farts during the highlight or something? If it's the "greatest highlight" we're voting for, then they play is actually kind of immaterial.

How about Jay Crawford not realizing he's on live and not taping a segment?

How about Andrew Bynum dropping the F-bomb during a casual interview?

Or how about Nicole Ritchie offering herself to Kobe in the most biblical of ways?

I want to see a girl forget the words to the American national anthem at a hockey game, then go retrieve the lyrics, then fall on her ass.

I want to see large men in tiny, skin-tight shorts brawling in a college basketball game... something you don't see anymore. (Really, when was the last college basketball fight?) Oh, okay, I guess they do still happen. (I especially like the end of that last clip when the announcer says, "...stomps on Jamal Smith -- can't do that.")

How about two NHL coaches getting in each other's faces during the most heated days of the Red Wings-Avalanche rivalry?

There's always Desmond Howard doing a bowl game special and talking about the Holiday Bowl, which featured Cal versus Texas A&M, and thinking A&M was the University of Texas...even going so far as to talk about specific players on UT and Cal matching up!

Or Tiger Woods letting a fart fly?

Honestly, the choices are endless. But no, we don't get the best highlights... we get to see the Stanford band on the field again, or Cartlon Fisk "waving" his home run fair to give the Sawx a miracle victory in the World Series -- which they then of course lost the next day. And we get to see... wowzers... Henry Aaron's home run again. Or Doug Flutie's hail mary pass to beat Miami back in '84. Wow, thrilling. And so topical. Maybe Berman can mention Flutie's f-cking drop-kick field goal a few hundred more times. Vomit.

Speaking Berman, of course, the best part of all of this is that the fat-ass, obnoxious, impossible-to-take bag of turds is the "host" for this made-up craptastic event. That's right, Berman, he of the cursing, disgusting and revealing videos circulating out there (the vids were taken off YouTube by ESPN but the link I put there will get you to them via Deadspin). Chris, I think YOU have already provided us with the "Greatest Highlight" of our year -- seeing you for what you really are: a complete douchebag.

Makes You Wonder How Bad Some Of These Guys Woulda Sucked Without Help

The day after the Mitchell Report came out, I was sitting in my office and overheard one of the older women in my office commenting on it. And it amused me that she said what she said (paraphrasing):

"You know who I was surprised about? Lenny Dykstra. I just never would have guessed he was using steroids."

Really? I mean, I understand she probably doesn't follow the sport closely enough but, seriously, come on. People knew Lenny was doing something fishy back in the early 1990s! He went from a spindly little leadoff hitter for the Mets to a guy who hit for power and looked like a thick meathead for the Phillies. Maybe it was just the cheesesteaks. (Incidentally, I love the fact that Dykstra was called "Nails" because of how tough he was, yet he only played basically ONE full season in his career.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about those players named in the Report and, obviously, we can all look at the good-to-great players and see that they might have been even better because of their substance abuse (i.e., Bonds, Clemens, Giambi, etc.). However, there were a lot of names of crappy players on there, and I thought it'd be fun to take a look at some of them and, just for fun, project what they might have been without the extra help they got.

Larry Bigbie - a career .267 hitter who's never been fully healthy and who has 31 homers in more than 1200 at-bats. Without Substances Projection: Mortgage broker.

Tim Laker - a career .226 hitter who has never gotten into more than 64 games in a season and whose career high in homers is 3. Without Substances Projection: School bus driver.

Josias Manzanillo - pitcher from '91 to '04 who appeared in 267 games, going 13-15 with a 4.71 ERA. Without Substances Projection: Gardener

Matt Franco - Played for three teams over eight seasons, hitting .267 with 22 HRs and 117. The HRs and RBIs are career totals not averages. Without Substances Projection: Cab driver.

Chuck Knoblauch - Took HGH, starting in 2001, followed soon after by major throwing problems, including hitting Keith Olbermann's mother in the stands with an attempted throw to first base. (Olbermann's mother was not playing first that day.) Without Substances Projection: Able to throw to first base from 65 feet away without injuring others.

FP Santangelo - Light-hitting dude who racked up 21 homers and 162 Ribbies in parts of seven seasons, while hitting a sizzling .245. Without Substances Projection: Hockey coach in hometown of Livonia, MI.

Todd Pratt - Catcher who somehow hung around the majors from '92 to '06, never playing in more than 80 games and having a career high of eight homers. A .251 hitter. Without Substances Projection: The taking-it-too-seriously guy on your rec-league softball team.

Chris Donnels - Who? .233 career hitter, with 17 HRs and 86 RBIs over parts of eight seasons. Without Substances Projection: Porn star; more well-known than as a baseball player.

Paul Lo Duca - Seasonal HR totals besides 2001: 0, 3, 2, 10, 7, 13, 6, 5, 9. HR total for 2001: 25. Whee! Career highs in HRs, RBIs and Batting Average. Hell of a year, Paulie. Without Substances Projection: Pizza dough tosser in Brooklyn.

Bart Miadich - Another "who?" Guy pitched in twelve games in '01 and '03 for Anaheim, never getting a decision but putting up a sparkling 6.75 ERA. Yet he was a "frequent purchaser of testosterone and Winstrol." Wow. How frequent could it have been? Without Substances Projection: Fluffer.

Adam Riggs - Played in 61 games between '97 and '04, smacking three homers and driving in ten whopping runs. He also hit a blistering .216. Without Substances Projection: Working at a rubber plant in Akron, OH.

Paxton Crawford - 5-1 between 2000 and 2001 as a 22-23 year old for the Boston Red Sox. Never played in the majors again. Without Substances Projection: Socialite at Massachussetts-area country clubs (come on, look at that name).

Jim Parque - 31-34 with a 5.42 ERA in his career. Without Substances Projection: Margerine seller. (Come on.)

Who's Now? Who Cares?

ESPN's current stupidity-laden concept is this unwatchable "Who's Now" thing, where every day they match up two current athletes and ask the public and their hodgepodge "panel" to determine who is more "now." The "winner" then moves on in the bracket. The brackets are named for famous athletes, simply to be politically correct, which ESPN loves to be. You have the Babe Ruth bracket, but then you can't have any more white males. So you have to have a woman. So yes, one of the four brackets about great athletes is named for Billie Jean King, a tennis-playing woman. Just saying.

Then another one is for Jordan, which is hard to argue, and the last one is Ali, also hard to argue as a polarizing, great sports figure.

But what's the point of all this? This whole "Who's now" bullspit is completely impossible to define and, thus, how can we know who is more... now, or whatever? And if so, what is this telling us? Last night's matchup was Tiger Woods and Dwayne Wade. Wade's sport is off for the summer -- Tiger is playing in the British Open this weekend. Does that make Tiger more "now"? But I saw D-Wade in a commercial where he gives free basketballs to some kids and a free Lincoln Navigator to their coach. Does that count for anything? Are there points in this game? Does anyone care?

Most pressing: Will D-Wade pay for the maintenance or gas on that behemoth Lincoln?

I have an idea for another cool segment on Sportscenter, which, trust me kids, used to be a really awesome show to watch. How about we do one called "Who cares?" In this segment, the public gets to vote on all the other segments, failed ESPN concepts and shows, and grating ESPN "personalities" that they want to see tossed into a giant bucket and catapulted into outer space. Here, I can get you started...

Chris Berman
NFL Live airing in May instead of Baseball Tonight
Stephen A. Smith
Stories about David Beckham and Posh Spice
Coverage of the WNBA
Anyone who argues that Pat Summitt is "really" the NCAA victories leader
Keyshawn
Fact or Fiction
Around the Horn
Max Kellerman
Stu Scott's pretend hood lingo