After watching last weekend's Southern Cal-Washington State game, I said to myself, "Self, Auburn would beat the Trojans by a couple of touchdowns." But that's not the point of this post.
The point is, that game was televised by Atlanta's own WTBS, and they did a heck of a good job. The picture quality was great, the camera angles were spot-on (far better than Can't Broadcast Sports' lackadaisical work in Gainesville), and the announcers made
Jefferson Pilot's Lincoln Financial's
Three Idiots Named Dave look like, er, three ill-informed and cliche-bellowing idiots named Dave.
All of which made me ask myself another question: "Self, why the hell isn't TBS still carrying the SEC?"
For those
too young to remember,
JP LF did not always televise the SEC's early-morning game. It was none other than Ted Turner, Atlanta's own septuagenarian cable mogul and all-around nutball, who first picked up that additional SEC game for telecast back in the 1980's. And while Ted will deservedly burn in hell for inventing the horror of the 11:30AM Central kickoff, his old network did and does light-years better of a job at actually televising a fooball game than the current owners of the conference's third-string contract.
What's not to love here? Unlike the syndicated and spotty coverage of
JP LF Sports, TBS is carried on every single cable and satellite system in the country (for those keeping score at home, that means an additional game on national television, not just some random regional pickup if you pay for GamePlan). They already cover every facet of a game better than
JP LF, and besides which, despite being owned by the TimeWarner colossus, Turner is still based out of Atlanta--so what the heck are they doing covering Pac-10 football?
Hey, Mike Slive!
Jefferson Pilot's Lincoln Financial's contract with the SEC is up in 2008. Here's an idea: drive over to Atlanta a day early before this year's championship game, and take a meeting with TBS. We, the long-suffering fans of the conference you run, will thank you.
2 comments:
Genius. Should be a win-win for everyone except the phrase "Big Man on Big Man."
TBS - that would indeed be a joy to those of us here in Texas. Bob Neal and Tim Foley were much better than the three stooges named Dave - which ceased to be funny the second time they said it.
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