Sports Media Watch presents the 10 Worst Sports Shows of the 2000s. Mark Shapiro figures prominently.
#10: Playmakers (2003, ESPN)
NFL players and the NFL itself found it to be an unrealistic and insulting depiction of professional football. Then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue even said the show was “one-dimensional and traded in racial stereotypes” (Sports Business Daily, 12/4/03). The very existence of the show threatened ESPN’s relationship with the NFL — which was and continues to be the most powerful league in sports.
But ESPN’s drama series Playmakers was supposed to ruffle feathers. That was the reason it existed. Why else would ESPN put a show on the air featuring drug use, nudity, expletives, and a reporter — played by then-ESPN reporter Thea Andrews — coming onto players in the locker room?
Playmakers was an attention grab masked as cutting-edge drama. All that mattered was shock value. “Hey, look! There’s a player using crack! Wow, they’re so edgy!” As Salon put it, in a generally positive review, the show was “good old-fashioned melodrama, a soap opera with pads, a big domed stadium standing in for the big hospital” (Salon.com, 8/26/03).
The show drew good ratings, but ESPN — not wanting to damage its relationship with the NFL — canceled it after one season.
#9: Beg, Borrow and Deal (2002-03, ESPN) and I’d Do Anything (2004-05, ESPN)
What do these two shows have in common? Neither had much to do with sports, and yet both aired on ESPN. These reality shows were arguably the most brazen attempt by ESPN to turn into a sports-themed version of MTV. At least Playmakers and Dream Job related to sports in some way.
In Beg, Borrow and Deal, contestants traveled across the country “without any money while completing sports-related tasks.” As ESPN’s Mark Shapiro, responsible for several of the shows on this list, put it: “It’s a gripping story, very gritty, very urban, very young. It has some sex appeal to it and some infighting. It makes for good television” (SBD, 8/28/02).
Gritty! Urban! Young! Sex appeal! Infighting! Ratings, ratings, ratings!
I’d Do Anything, ESPN’s take on Fear Factor, featured contestants doing dangerous stunts to win a sports-related prize for a friend or relative. One of the stunts Shapiro “proudly” detailed to Sports Business Journal was “being thrown into a shark tank as they tear apart tuna, and having to film it (best film wins)” (Sports Business Journal, 5/17/04).
#8: McEnroe (2004, CNBC)
On his first show, John McEnroe enticed viewers with this stirring statement: “I’m gonna say exactly what’s on my mind. You better F-in believe it” (SBD, 7/8/04). Despite that charming beginning, viewers were less than enamored with McEnroe’s 2004 talk show on CNBC.
On more than one occasion, the show drew a 0.0 rating. One September ’04 episode “ranked No. 833 out of 834 Nielsen-rated cable shows, beating only ‘How To Boil Water’ on the Food Network” (SBD, 10/8/04).
Let that sink in.
At least to this observer, it seems clear that John McEnroe typically needs someone to work off of — a host, moderator or play-by-play voice. Asking him to host a show may not have been a great idea. One review noted that McEnroe’s interviews included “a lot of two people stepping on each other?s sentences,” while another said the show had the feel of “cable access programming” (SBD, 7/15/04).
And the ratings of public access programming to boot.
#7: Mohr Sports (2002, ESPN)
One common thread on this list: many of the shows involve ESPN attempting to foray into other genres, like reality shows, scripted dramas — or in this case, late night talk shows.
Starring comedian Jay Mohr, Mohr Sports debuted on ESPN in ’02. At the time, Mark Shapiro made sure to note that Mohr, previously with FSN, would “show Fox what they missed” (SBD, 4/2/02).
Prior to its debut, Mohr Sports producer Robert Morton said the show would try to “appeal to an intelligent audience. We don’t want to insult our audience. … This is ESPN. We can’t embarrass the network.”
Here’s a sample of the show’s intelligent jokes. “A (CO) woman was awarded $3.1 million after she said she contracted herpes from a bad manicure. In a related story, half the NBA just got alibis” (SBD, 6/5/02).
After less than a year on the air, the show was canceled.
(As an aside: Mohr said he told Shapiro that he wanted his first guest to be Hank Aaron. Shapiro’s alleged response? “Hank Aaron’s not going to get you ratings. … No one cares about that story anymore.” SBD, 8/15/02)
#6: Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith (2005-07, ESPN2)
This was not a particularly bad show. The guest list even once included former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. However, the very fact that the host was Stephen A. Smith — loud, obnoxious and overexposed — no doubt kept many viewers away from the show.
Smith was already ubiquitous on ESPN, appearing on NBA Shootaround and SportsCenter, occasionally showing up on Cold Pizza/First Take and sometimes guest hosting Pardon the Interruption. By the time Quite Frankly came around, nobody could be blamed if they were simply sick and tired of Smith.
But Smith had the stamp of approval from none other than Mark Shapiro. “Stephen A. is ringing a bell. People like him and dislike him, but they still watch him. These days, it?s hard to find a talent who strikes a chord that way” (SBD, 8/1/05). (On a related note, Shapiro reminisced about lobbying for Smith’s hiring in ’03: “There were 28 people in the room, and they were all vehement: ?No way, never, never!? I said, ?We?ve gotta get this guy in here.'”)
The show debuted with a 0.3 cable rating and never seemed to gain traction. After the show moved from 6:30 PM to 11 PM, Smith expressed his discontent with ESPN’s scheduling and promotion. After less than two years on the air, it was canceled in ’07 (SBD, 7/21/06).
#5: Dream Job (2003-05, ESPN)
Did you enjoy David Holmes on ESPNews and SportsCenter? What about Dee Brown on ESPN NBA coverage? Then you can thank Dream Job, a reality show where the winners were given on-air jobs at ESPN.
Essentially American Idol for sports broadcasters, Dream Job was hosted by Stuart Scott, with judges Tony Kornheiser (replaced by Woody Paige in the second season), Cold Pizza‘s Kit Hoover, NFL player LaVar Arrington (replaced after the first season) and the show’s resident Simon Cowell, Al Jaffe.
As mentioned before, the winner of the series got an on-air position at ESPN. That’s right. All you needed to become a SportsCenter anchor was to win a reality show. To top it off, the winner’s first-year salary was based on a quiz taken at the end of the show.
The show was not particularly good television. As the New York Times‘ Richard Sandomir noted, “Live television combined with on-air inexperience is difficult to watch unless schadenfreude is your game and you enjoy brain lock, halting verbal rhythms, mispronunciations, inaccuracies, wild hand gestures and on-camera discomfort” (SBD, 3/8/04).
None of the winners from the three seasons of the show — Mike Hall, Holmes, and Brown — remain with ESPN.
At least one thing can be said for the Dream Job contestants: all of them were better than Rick Reilly.
#4: ESPN Hollywood (2005, ESPN2)
This was the culmination of ESPN’s obsession with mixing sports and entertainment. As Mark Shapiro put it, “Think ?Entertainment Tonight? or ?Access Hollywood,? but sports.” Hosted by Cold Pizza alum Thea Andrews and Saved by the Bell‘s Mario Lopez, the 30-minute show debuted with an 8 rating. A 0.08 rating, that is.
Among the stories reported on ESPN Hollywood: Quentin Richardson and Brandy reportedly calling off their engagement, the friendship between James Blake and John Mayer, and David and Victoria Beckham approaching Brad Pitt about buying his estate.
As ESPN’s first ombudsman, George Solomon, put it, ESPN Hollywood “lacks substance and makes no attempt to follow the traditional ESPN path of hard-nosed sports, sports conversation or sports news” (SBD, 10/14/05).
The show lasted less than one year before being canceled. Then-ESPN executive David Berson noted that the show “wasn?t the best opportunity to cover athletes and entertainment. … I think fans want information about athletes in the context of sports coverage” (New York Times, 6/1/07).
#3: ESPN First Take (2007-present, ESPN2)
An otherwise harmless, bland, colorless morning show, ESPN First Take has earned a spot on this list for one major reason.
Skip Bayless. The ever-contrarian Bayless is arguably the star of this show, engaging in an endless stream of debates with everyone from Woody Paige and Jemele Hill to Lil’ Wayne and Nelly.
Former ESPN ombudsman Le Anne Shreiber once called Bayless one of the most “vehement and absolutist” personalities on the network (USA Today, 5/25/07). Turner’s Charles Barkley recently called him an idiot on NBC’s Jay Leno Show — and that was charitable, considering what Barkley has had to say about Bayless in the past. And on Monday, tennis player Andy Roddick wrote on Twitter that Bayless “is the biggest idiot on TV … he knows ZERO about sports. ZERO.” Hours later, Roddick noted that “not one person has come to the defense of [Bayless] … not one” (Twitter, 12/14/09).
Needless to say, if the cornerstone of your show is someone that is almost universally disliked, someone who appears to have no redeeming qualities — at least when it comes to talking about sports — that does not reflect well on the show as a whole.
And considering that the rest of the show lacks any discernible personality or reason for existing, Bayless must be viewed as the main attraction.
But at least First Take is better than its predecessor.
#2: Cold Pizza (2003-07, ESPN2)
What exactly was this show? Sports? Pop culture? Who knows? There didn’t seem to be much of a direction. There was The Must List, with the editor of Entertainment Weekly, there were reviews of video games — there was even, at one point, a dreadful ‘halftime’ show. The set looked like it came straight out of Boy Meets World, and original co-hosts Kit Hoover and Thea Andrews seemed more suited for entertainment news rather than sports news.
The show tried to be everything to everyone, illustrated perfectly by this Mark Shapiro quote: “Think ‘GMA,’ think sports, think fans, think fashion” (SBD, 10/30/02). At least Shapiro mentioned sports; an ’03 Cableworld article described the show as a “mix of lifestyles, music, fashion, [and] Regis-and-Kelly-like banter” (SBD, 6/3/03). Nowhere in there was sports mentioned.
The show began with technical difficulties, which seems somehow appropriate. As one reviewer put it, “[t]he first 20 minutes seemed like a decade.” Another begged for someone to “please pull the plug on this horrible lab experiment.” (SBD, 10/24/03)
As time went on, the show underwent several personnel changes — dropping Andrews, Hoover and Leslie Maxie, and adding Dana Jacobson, Bayless and Paige — but never seemed to find itself. Replacement series First Take is actually a dramatic improvement on Cold Pizza, which should illustrate just how bad Cold Pizza actually was.
#1: Around the Horn (2002-present, ESPN)
Weeks after the show’s debut, the late L.A. Times writer Mike Penner described it as “30 minutes of hell, orchestrated by a blathering self-important loudmouth named Max Kellerman” (SBD, 11/26/02). Slate’s Robert Weintraub called it “pointless noise pollution, the ThunderStix of sports programming” (SBD, 11/8/02). In early ’03, Bill Conlin said there was a “building consensus that” the show was “the worst sports-panel show in history” (SBD, 1/2/03).
And after seven years, the only improvement ESPN’s Around the Horn has made is in the role of the host.
This show took the formula from Pardon the Interruption — sportswriters arguing about various topics — but forgot the key ingredients. Likable people with insightful views on the sports stories of the day.
On Around the Horn, none of the panelists — with some exceptions, including Jackie MacMullan and J.A. Adande — are particularly likable or seem to particularly like each other. Whereas Pardon the Interruption‘s Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are good friends, it’s tough to imagine any of the Around the Horn panelists having any sort of relationship outside of the show. Even after all these years, they have zero chemistry.
The arguments, for which the panelists receive an arbitrary amount of points, are typically of the knee jerk variety, and usually vitriolic (or at least taken to the extreme).
Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan may be the best example of what’s wrong with Around the Horn. On Pardon the Interruption and The Sports Reporters, Ryan is generally thoughtful and reserved. On Around the Horn, he rants, raves and occasionally lacks even basic class (during one show, he commented that Yao Ming had figuratively “defecated on Shaq’s head” in a game).
As the show somehow enters the 2010s still on the air, the only saving grace for Around the Horn is host Tony Reali. That’s it. It’s literally just him.
