Sportscenter Advertising

Oh, sweet Jesus Cristo. Sportscenter is my dream account. Always has been. I've been a fan of the "This is Sportscenter" campaign since I was a wee tike and Sportscenter was still a low-production, informal show. The random humor, the "candid" insights into what made the show so awesome. The silly mascots doing silly things. The awkward acting performances of star athletes. Oh, it is all so wonderful.

Except that while the advertising has maintained a consistent and hilarious voice throughout the years, the show is a mere shell of what it used to be. And that makes me sad. Sportscenter, and ESPN in general, used to be a goofy, low-fi channel with silly graphics and sillier anchors. It used to be simpler, idealistic and take itself less seriously. It used to have anchors and personalities you didn't want to slap the smarminess out of. It used to have experts that actually knew what they were talking about. (Scratch that. No it didn't). It used to be a casual experience with less-than-flashy graphics and low budgets. It used to be fun.

Now Sportscenter is loaded down with statistics that don't make sense, anchors that are so smug with self-satisfaction that they are completely intolerable, and crazy, amped-up graphics and sound effects that make me feel like I'm in some kind of Michael-Bay-meets-cheesy-80s-sound-effects-time-warp. It's depressing. I miss the good ol' days.

Amazingly so, the advertising for the show hasn't changed. The tone, the humor, the ideas are all still there. In fact, the tone has spread over to other shows, establishing a consistent voice for the channel. And it is still at the top of my dream account list. Despite how much distaste I have for the actual product. I love cognitive dissonance.