The Out Route

When there's nothing on television, and that happens often, the ESPNs are my safety net. However, I often face disappointment when I turn on ESPN to find poker. It just brings me down. Show me a SportsCenter or a Baseball Tonight or an NFL Live or even a game of golf or tennis. Face it, poker jumped the shark three years ago. It only had one exciting year and it lasted that long because that's how long it takes to realize poker is boring to watch.

I'll be honest. I watched the World Series of Poker the year everyone else watched it -- the year Chris Moneymaker won it all. And thinking back on it, I don't know why I cared. Hell, I knew Chris Moneymaker was going to win because it was all pre-taped and the results were reported before the thing aired. I learned my lesson fast and haven't watched poker since.

Poker isn't easy to play, I'll give the players that. It's not easy to watch either. In an entire poker program, there may be one or two exciting hands. It's a game of fat guys who don't need to have any physical skill. Poker has no right to even be on ESPN because it's not even a sport. You shouldn't be able to play a sport online. Darts is more of a sport. Even beer pong requires the use of an arm. The fact that a guy with no arms and no legs can play poker as long as someone shows him his cards negates any sports status it has. At this rate, ESPN will be broadcasting chess matches in no time.

ESPN needs some filler because there aren't good sports going on 24/7. However, I turned on ESPN2 last night while there were a thousand college football games going on and I was greeted with poker. ESPN has had a habit of airing things long after they were popular, like the "And Twins!!!!" Miller football song. This is just another example. It's time for ESPN, and all the other channels that present us celebrity poker, to drop this. ESPN can use this time to show us real quasi-sports such as wiffle ball. That's something I can get behind, because unlike poker, its a game where you need your limbs.