lot of sports stuff lately... i have some picks & pans...

jeff and rick came over to watch the world series game 1 tonight, which got me wondering: what are the best sports to watch for any type of social gathering?

baseball would actually probably be pretty far down on the list, as the game tends to drag a bit and not enough big events really happen. football may be a little better, since touchdowns, sacks and interceptions tend to often more often than baseball home runs, pick-offs and plays at the plate. hockey and basketball are probably a little better, since they have more constant scoring. basketball might be the best since points are always being scored, although the start-and-stop nature of basketball kind of hurts it a little. sports like golf and soccer have got to be the worst, where highlight-type moments occur very seldomly.

i'm actually more the type of viewer to enjoy surfing the dial more when it comes to sports. most of the time it can be a bit tough to stick to one 3 hour sporting event and not start to get bored. since i got the NHL center ice package this season, it's sweet when like half a dozen games are on and you can just flip around, finding the one with the best pace or a heated rivalry.

quite often the bulk of my sunday is spent just lounging around and watching whatever major sports are on. on average, between national satellite coverage and local antenna, i seem to be able to get about 5 HD NFL games each week, and have yet to be forced to watch dallas in standard definition. the sunday night ESPN game looks great, although the commentators are just awful. i can't pull in ABC in high-def yet, but hopefully that'll change in the next few months.

now that i mention ESPN, that reminds me how much they're starting to suck. they threw out their NHL deal, which given that i've got access to all the local feeds of the games anyway i don't really care that much about, plus OLN's national coverage so far isn't that bad. ESPN just seemed to get too big for their own britches, or something. some of their "oringal programming" has been pretty good, such as playmakers and some sports movies here and there. but their facination with milking the crap out of poker has gotten so absurd. honestly, i'd rather see a couple unranked college football teams play than to see poker. almost anything is better than poker in my opinion, how bout racquetball instead? lacrosse? and should i really feel all that bad for absolutely hating stuart scott at this point? his street slang bullshit is completely annoying and i'm tired of pretending that lazy eye or whatever doesn't completely freak me out. i'm completely fine with ESPN losing some baseball games to OLN and basketball to TNT, assuming HD versions of both channels are available to directv soon.

--j