The Awful Announcing Wednesday Newsletter is a deep dive into all things sports media with original commentary, highlights from the week, social media buzz, and much more. Below is our “A Block” that leads off the newsletter. You can read this and more by subscribing here. We send a recap of what’s been on AA on Monday and Friday mornings as well as the extended original version on Wednesdays.
When anchor Lee Leonard welcomed viewers to ESPN for the first time in 1979, he said SportsCenter would be “a big part of our future.” Truer words have hardly ever been spoken. SportsCenter is the singular defining show in the history of televised sports. Its brand is almost as well-known and as popular as ESPN itself. And it’s served generations of sports fans with highlights, news, and much more.
A large piece of the history of SportsCenter has been the anchors that have graced the desk and delivered those highlights. Depending on how old you are and when your formative years were, there are probably names that immediately spring to mind whether it’s Chris Berman, Robin Roberts, Charley Steiner, Linda Cohn, Craig Kilborn, Lindsay Czarniak, Scott Van Pelt and much more.
But what has defined SportsCenter have been the iconic duos that spanned many years and formed a partnership not just with each other, but with fans at home. Pairings like Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, Rich Eisen and Stuart Scott, and Neil Everett and Stan Verrett.
Everett and Verrett didn’t immediately enter that rarefied air of their predecessors, but part of that is human nature. We never have a true appreciation of the present until it becomes the past. However, their pairing on the late night SportsCenter aged like a fine wine, getting better and better with time. That came to an end last week when Everett said goodbye to ESPN with his contract not being renewed after more than two decades with the network. Fourteen of those years were spent with Verrett in Los Angeles with Verrett paying tribute to Everett saying they were “brothers for life.”
With the industry changing so rapidly, Neil Everett saying goodbye to ESPN and Stan Verrett is a seminal moment. SportsCenter (aside from maybe SVP’s personality driven version) doesn’t possess the same impact it once did in 1993, 2003, or even 2013. You’ve already seen the highlight you want to see or the score you need to check before you even pull up ESPN on your iPad.
The connection with the show and the anchors can’t be what it once was all those years ago. The current generation, let alone future ones, won’t have the same sense of nostalgia when they look back on SportsCenter today or the anchors that called the highlights because everything is already at their fingertips.
As Everett rides off into the sunset, it’s not only the end of the last great SportsCenter duo, but the end of an entire era as well.
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