Is there a bigger rip-off on cable than "ESPN Classic"? And to think that I once was excited about moving to the West SF Valley because I had been told (incorrectly, as it turned out) that it would be on basic cable. Half its programming is the treacly "Sports Century", and about 2/5 consists of rebroadcasts of second-rate car races and SEC college football games from the '80's. The rest of the time, it simply rebroadcasts the final two games of the 1991 World Series. Absolutely no replays of NFL football, ever, but if you stay up til 4:00 a.m., they will show those propaganda films football teams make to celebrate their season ("football experts everywhere predict that the 'never-say-die' attitude of the 2000 New Orleans Saints defense will lead to bigger things in 2001").

Even worse is when they have a replay of an old game that was entirely forgetable at the time it was played, but is only on because ESPN had the tape in its vaults. I must have seen the 1984 NCAA tournament game between Dayton and Washington about a half-dozen times on that channel; it wasn't particularly close, the only player of note on either team was Detlef Schrempf, and the team that won, Dayton, got knocked out in the next round. Oh well, as the historian and social critic Jill Schlessinger once said, "the world is ugly and the people are sad."
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