I couldn't agree more. And when you look at ESPN's actual sports programming it's mostly SportsCenter and talking heads, ie, non essential viewing to sports fan

I couldn't agree more. And when you look at ESPN's actual sports programming it's mostly SportsCenter and talking heads, ie, non essential viewing to sports fans. MLB and NBA are all on local affiliates or TNT/TBS, and NFL has one game per week on ESPN and the rest on Fox, CBS, and NBC (and NHL is somewhere not on ESPN). Basically ESPN has a nice hodgepodge of college and pro sports, but isn't really necessary to any one fan base.