TV: CatchphraseCenter

I caught last night's SportsCenter -- the 90-minute special edition called SportsCenter Old School. These special editions, which will be running all week in celebration of ESPN's 25th anniversary, feature alumni of the show returning to once again take the anchor's chair and call the highlights. Last night, it was Craig Kilborn coming back to take a seat next to Dan Patrick. And as I watched, I realized: not only do I not miss the smug and smarmy Craig Kilborn, I don't even miss SportsCenter.

The last time I watched the show with any regularity was about four or five years ago, when I worked in an office with a big football pool, and felt like I had to do my homework. Nowadays, I'll watch football when it's on (NFL only, no college -- unless Cal is playing, and come on, how often does that get televised?), and I'll occasionally sit still for a Dodgers game called by Vin Scully, or the women's nine-ball tournaments, which for some reason I love, or the odd tennis match or three, or golf if it's Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But I certainly don't care about what's happening in all those other sports events I'm not watching, which makes SportsCenter kind of useless for me.

Especially since it's so goddam annoying. (Back me up here, King Kaufman.) The point of SportsCenter long ago ceased to be delivering sports highlights; the point is for the anchor to insert himself into the highlights with his "wry" "hip" "humor" and "clever" catchphrases. Old School illustrated this fact by showing highlight reels of Kilborn's catchphrases, having Patrick quiz Kilborn on his catchphrases, having Kilborn first coyly refuse to revive the catchphrases as he read the baseball highlights, which became redundant and annoying enough to be a catchphrase unto itself ("No catchphrases, that's simply a home run"), and finally having Kilborn use every one of his not-so-fondly-remembered catchphrases after all ("Jumanji!" "Krakatoa!"), even adding a few new ones ("You stay classy, San Diego," straight out of Anchorman).

All the current SportsCenter anchors are guilty of this catchphrase style of announcing to some degree or another, but it's Stuart "Booyah!" Scott who is currently the most egregious offender. He so desperately wants to be stolen away from ESPN by a major network, or to host his own talk show, that it almost hurts to watch him. But Chris Berman's nickname-game isn't far behind in terms of obnoxiousness.

The only two SportsCenter catchphrases I've ever enjoyed aren't even SportsCenter catchphrases. The first is "Sweet sassy molassey!" from the classic Saturday Night Live send-up of SportsCenter, as spoken by Ray Romano (which, of course, the ESPN people immediately appropriated for themselves). The second is of nebulous origin: I seem to recall that it was from a Rich Eisen-hosted ESPN game show, a very short-lived one (not 2-Minute Drill), and I believe Peter Gammons was actually the contestant (maybe this was some 20th anniversary special show that I'm not recalling correctly). Anyway, the question was, "Which of the following is not a catchphrase used to describe a home run on SportsCenter?" I forget the other three choices, but the correct answer, the one not used, was "a four-base hit," which was by far my favorite. Wouldn't you like to hear the sentence, "And Barry Bonds gets a four-base hit!" "That is an upper deck four-base hit for Sosa!"

I was kind of looking forward to watching all of the Old School specials this week, catching everyone's return appearances (except for Keith Olbermann, who is still hated at ESPN, and wasn't invited back). Now, I'm thinking I'll just watch whatever the heck I want to watch on TV tonight, but describe whomever I'm watching as being "en fuego," or shout out some random word, Tourette's-like, every few seconds: "Yahtzee!" "Roanoke!" "San Buenaventura!" That should be about the same.