Scott Van Pelt appears on screen five days a week at midnight, sometimes a little earlier or later, but usually in a tie and pocket square, with the spotlight on his bald head. Reflect and ready to talk about the day's sports. There are highlights, analysis, and commentary, and depending on when you watch it, there may be some interesting parts. (On Mondays, he and sidekick Stanford Steve will deliver “Bad Beats,” a Letterman-style rundown of the plays behind the week's most brutal gambling losses.) (The fumble was a meaningless three-point shot at the buzzer that crushed those who played the game. The fumble was a late fumble that prevented the winning team from “covering,” and a meaningless touchdown.) , likes to say that he's just trying to be himself when he's on the air. If we take him at his word in this regard, it's safe to say that he is thoughtful, sarcastic, self-conscious, and sometimes sentimental. He's also not aggressive, obnoxious, or particularly opinionated, which makes him a rarity among today's sports media personalities.
Van Pelt is the anchor of ESPN's late-night “SportsCenter,” which was made famous by Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick in the 1990s. He's the face of a show that was once the network's most popular show, and now a comforting presence for sports fans of a certain temperament, as the network and the entire sports-entertainment complex exploded at the same time. However, it has continued for 10 years. And I melted around him. He's the last man standing in the middle of a never-ending sports media revolution.
Paradoxically, it was the late-night “SportsCenter” television broadcasts that ignited this revolution in the first place. I can't stress enough how big a deal this show was during its heyday. It was essentially the only place you could get all the sports scores and highlights of the day. The staccato opening bars of the theme music — Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah! — was like a late dinner bell for sports fans. But “SportsCenter” was more than just a sports news show. It was a cultural phenomenon. Catchphrases thrown by the hosts were “An Fuego,” “Cool as the other side of the pillow,” and “Yahtzee!” — permeated the broader culture, as did the colloquial conversation surrounding them.
The tone and attitude of “SportsCenter” is zany, irreverent, and fun, perhaps best embodied by its sassy, flawless commercials, which are usually filmed in ESPN's generic corporate offices. (In one of my favorite scenes, a bird-themed mascot delivering lunch crashes into a glass wall in a conference room, interrupting anchor Stuart Scott's ongoing meeting, but he remains unfazed.) Shortly after, another bird mascot did the exact same thing.) “Seriously,'' Scott deadpanned, “I have to fog this glass.'') His tone and demeanor were as per ESPN. It will extend far beyond itself. “SportsCenter” spawned the prototype for the smart, fast-talking sports broadcaster that clearly inspired Aaron Sorkin's first foray into television, the short-lived “Sports Night.” In other words, the conversations we now think of as “Sorkinesque” are indebted to Patrick and Olbermann. The language branded as ambitious Americans in “The West Wing” was born in the world of sports.
