Why is this stadium empty?
With the most boring sports weekend of the year starting last night, fans all over the country are casting about to keep their minds off the fact that there is no football, baseball is still three weeks away, the NBA regular season is starting to drag, and college basketball is useless for another month still. SMC is committed to seeing somebody do a double backflip on a snowmobile (or die trying), but I would like to submit for your approval an event which in past years would have taken up a sunday afternoon/evening on a major network, and Saturday night on ESPN: The NHL All-Star Game.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the face of Versus.
Why haven’t you heard of this? Shouldn’t ESPN be airing commercials for this every thirty seconds and putting the logo in the corner of the screen? No, because Gary Bettman, the idiot who cost the NHL an entire season, decided to sign a broadcast contract with a channel that is harder to find than, well………. an NHL game on national television. The game is on Versus, and if you are among the millions reading this and thinking What the hell is Versus? you are not alone. This is the channel formerly known as the Outdoor Life Network, where you can find such television friendly programming as the entire Tour de France (eight hours a day of rear views of bent over European guys in spandex), Hank Parker’s Outdoor Magazine (a fishing show) and Babe Winkleman’s Good Fishing (yep, another fishing show). The last two of those are on at the same time as ESPN’s “Best Hour of Programming on TV” from 5-6 (ATH, PTI). hmmmmm… Fishing, Hunting, Mountaineering, Hockey….. Which doesn’t fit? It is a network which does not have a Sportscenter type newscast (even NESN has SportsDesk), nobody knows where to find it, and it makes the NHL look like the niche sport which it is in danger of becoming than one of the four major pro sports leagues in this country. Yup, Versus sucks as bad as Tim Tebow.
Instead of Barry Melrose and his mullet, Versus gives us a freaking puppet.
I can understand why signing a contract to have the games aired on Versus sounded like a good idea when the league was coming out of the lost season of 2004-2005. They were offering more money to a cash strapped league than ESPN was. But this whole thing smacks of a decision which was not thought through in its entirety. Yes, Versus offered more money, but ESPN offers more exposure, bigger ratings and more coverage on the family of networks. This would lead to more advertising dollars for the league and it’s teams, at least making up the difference in money between the two offers. Of course, I don’t have the numbers, but seeing the NHL’s product (which is beautiful in HD, and not just because you can see the blood bouncing on ice) on the number one sports network would probably cause more fans to watch than having to search to find a game on a channel that is most famous for hunting and fishing shows.
Which brings me to Gary Bettman. He is a good man by all accounts, and doesn’t seem to have any major character flaws, but he obviously wants to go back to work for the NBA (where he was one of David Stern’s underlings before getting the NHL job), since the decision to spurn ESPN for more money is clearly aimed at putting his current company out of business. I really wants to know how he defends this move. This weekend’s events are some of the best advertisements that the league has but nobody will be able to find them. The game itself is a blast, usually featuring nearly thirty goals. The skills challenge tonight is also awesome TV with competitions like fastest skater, shooting accuracy and (my favorite) hardest shot. These guys hut 100 MPH with their slap shots and the competition is almost as intense and fun as the Home Run Derby.
So fear not. Sunday will have a great sporting event to watch even though the NFL is punishing (and making me less interested, frankly) us for loving it too much by skipping a week before the Superbowl. Watch the NHL All-Star game on Versus (channel 62 on comcast in Boston) at 6 PM on Sunday and the skills competition tonight. Eff Gary Bettman for trying to steal this great event from us.
Eff A-Rod too, just on principal.
2o Days.
Done.
