Let me kick this off by saying that this was an idea tweeted out last week by The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis (no relation), one that I thought was brilliant and needed further amplification.
We’ve gotten quite the nostalgia trip from ESPN during the coronavirus pandemic. There’s been The Last Dance, the Lance Armstrong documentary, random “Bad Beats” segments on Michael Jordan games and another edition of The Ocho.
But as Curtis noted when the Worldwide Leader celebrated its amazing This is SportsCenter commercials with a special last week, maybe all we really need is to just watch some old SportsCenter episodes.
Here’s my take: YES. YES PLEASE. If there are no rights issues or problems with running old clips, I would watch all of them and marvel at the way the late Stuart Scott broke down highlights.
I would sit with rapt attention listening to the banter between Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann on “The Big Show.” Just watch this!
We all loved the faux Kenny Mayne and Linda Cohn ads during The Last Dance. How about the real thing?
Even just those intros, which are poetry. I’ll take an hour’s worth:
I know, there are a bunch on YouTube. But to see them on a TV and not off a VHS recording? Television. GOLD.
