What If?

[BrettBaldeck]

Here is a question I have been thinking about. What if ESPN and ABC never lost the rights to NASCAR from 2001-2006, and jsut carried NASCAR through current. Do you think we would be seeing what we see today? As in Pit Studio, Tech Center, Cut-Away Cars, Suzy Kolber, Musberger?

Basically what im asking is. If ESPN kept the rights, would they have better coverage than they have today? Would it still be the same as it was in the 90s and 2000?

[Steve]

Possibly, but you have to admit that ESPN as a whole has become more flashy as of late, and if Fox also stepped into the fray in place of CBS/TNN/etc., they still might have influenced the development of ESPN's coverage.

[Cheryl]

I guess I'm of the mind that we'd still have the more focused coverage ESPN gave us in the past, without all the tickers/pointers/infield hosts, over the top graphics.

But then, I read so many complaints on my A/V forums about how ESPN "does everything but show the game" on Monday Night Football now.  Meaning they spend so much time talking to celebrities in the booth instead of staying with the game coverage.  A good (bad) example of this was the Navy game we watched on ESPNU Friday night.  After halftime, they had Roger Staubach and another former Navy player in the booth for about 15 minutes.  During that time, they did almost no play-by-play and kept flipping between shots of the game and the guys talking in the booth.  Just disgraceful!  The coverage was about comparable to missing restarts during races.  Why they couldn't spend the halftime show talking to these guys is beyond me.

Cheryl

[Desmond]

To answer Brett's question, it would have made no difference to me.  Somewhere along the way, new management would have taken over and ordered changes to make it similar to what we see now.  I base that on how SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight have changed over the years.

[Steve]

Speaking of guests in the booth, the Chicago Cubs TV team has the singer of the 7th inning stretch visit the booth during the bottom of the 7th inning to chat with the commentators, but at least that's possible with baseball where there's not always action going on. Sometimes the commentators do get distracted, though.