Scott Van Pelt appears on screen five nights a week at midnight – sometimes a little earlier or later – usually in a tie and pocket square, the spotlight reflecting off his bald head, ready to talk about sports day. There will be highlights, analysis, commentary and, depending on when you tune in, maybe a bit of fun too. (On Mondays, he and his buddy, Stanford Steve, deliver “Bad Beats,” a Letterman-style compilation of the plays behind the week's most brutal game losses — the meaningless three-pointer at the buzzer that left bettors at the “under.” “The late fumble and the pointless touchdown that prevented the winning team from covering.”) Van Pelt likes to say that he just tries to be himself on air. If we take him at his word, we can safely say that he is thoughtful, ironic, confident and occasionally sentimental. Additionally, he is not aggressive, obnoxious, or particularly opinionated, making him a rarity among today's sports media personalities.
Van Pelt is the host of the late-night edition of ESPN's “SportsCenter,” made famous in the 1990s by Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. He has been the face of the show for ten years – once the network's hottest franchise, now more of a consolation for sports fans of a certain disposition – even as the network and the entire sports and entertainment complex simultaneously blew up and melted around it together. He is the last man standing in the midst of a ceaseless and ongoing revolution in sports media.
Ironically, it was the late-night show “SportsCenter” that sparked this revolution in the first place. It can't be overstated how big the show was in its heyday. Practically speaking, it was the only place where you could get all the sports results and highlights of the day. The staccato opening bars of the theme music – dah duh dah, dah duh dah! – were like a late dinner bell for sports fans. But “SportsCenter” was much more than a sports news show; it was a cultural phenomenon. The catchphrases his hosts spread on the air—“En fuego,” “Cool as the other side of the pillow,” “Yahtzee!”—permeated the broader culture, as did the chatter that surrounded them.
“SportsCenter” had a tone and an attitude — goofy, irreverent, funny — perhaps best embodied by its cheeky, pitch-perfect commercials, usually filmed in ESPN’s general corporate offices. (In my favorite movie, a bird-themed mascot carrying a lunch bumps into the glass wall of a conference room, interrupting a meeting led by moderator Stuart Scott, who doesn't bat an eyelash. Moments later, another bird mascot does exactly the same thing.” “Seriously,” Scott deadpans, “we need to frost that glass.” That tone and attitude would go far beyond ESPN itself. “SportsCenter” created the archetype of the smart, fast-talking sports broadcaster, which was clearly Aaron Sorkin's first foray into television, the short-lived “Sports Night,” inspired—that is, the dialogue we now call “Sorkinesque” owes a debt to Patrick and Olbermann, the language branded in “The West Wing” as an aspirational brand of Americana should, originated in the world of sports.
Comments are closed.