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What I Watched Last Night

By Pat Bataillon

Monday Night Football premiered last night; my Monday nights have been saved. Football has once again proven to be a viable entertainment option.


The big news, of course, is that MNF is now on ESPN instead of ABC, if you didn’t know that, you have obviously not watched even a minute of ESPN for a minute during the last four months.
The MNF hype extends to the show itself. ESPN begins MNF coverage two hours before kickoff. Two hours of coverage might be necessary for the Super Bowl or the College National Championship, but the Vikings against the Redskins? I think not.
Maybe because ESPN is now the MTV of sports programming, maybe they feel it is entirely appropriate to cover things till I am sick of them.
This weekend, in college football, No. 19 Nebraska will be playing No. 4 USC on Saturday night. I am a Nebraska fan, having grown up there. I am not looking forward to watching anything on ESPN because of this. ESPN will be yapping about how this is the greatest match-up ever this season. How USC will be proving that they are still on top and how Nebraska is the up-and-coming powerhouse football program of the past.
Honestly, I think it will be a high-scoring game. It will be nice to watch two storied programs play one another. But it is not the greatest match-up of the season. Let’s just keep it at that and not ruin the game by over-hyping it for everyone. It is just sports. Lives are not on the line.
Well, I am worried about what could happen to me if Nebraska does win. If there is a naked man painted in red running down Michigan Avenue late Saturday night screaming nonsense, you’ll know who won.
Then again, if ESPN got ahold of that footage, even I’d get sick of it after nonstop showing for a couple of days. The games are fun enough; why distract us from what we really want to watch in peace?
See what else Pat Bataillon has been watching, in the complete collection of What I Watched Last Night.

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Posted on September 12, 2006