It's like someone peeked into our soul and stole our thoughts. Sportsline's Clay Travis hits the nail on the head when he We may not be happy about it, but JP Sports is as closely associated with SEC football in our minds as Golden Flake and Cotton States insurance. This is not a good association because the universal response to "JP picked up the Dawgs on Saturday" is "Ahhh, shit." And the funny thing is, we're still not really sure what Jefferson-Pilot actually is.
I can only imagine how much more intense our feelings of enmity would be if we resided in the Central Time Zone. Only 9-year olds should play football before noon.
A preview of Travis's poetry:
JP's ability to turn an otherwise pleasant evening game into an early morning slugfest at a temperature approaching 110 degrees was without parallel in the annals of modern sports history. As the early morning beer flowed, JP's name was cursed to high heaven.Travis knocks it out of the park when he slams JP's incomparable ability to deliver out-of-date scores of interest:
JP's sports score motto might as well have been, "There's never a finished game we can't give you a first quarter score for." If JP did current events, midway through last year's UT-Kentucky game, this would have scrolled across the bottom of the screen: "Neil Armstrong walked on the moon today ... one small step for man, one gnat lap for mankind." Moments later, this score update would have trickled by: "Georgia Tech 126 Cumberland 0 (Halftime).
Golden Flake Sweet Heat and SEC Football = why we fought all them warsThe sad part is I'm sure we won't even notice the difference between Lincoln Financial's and JP's coverage of the Dawgs season opener. Same
Dawgnoxious
Programming Chief,
Delicious Snack Division
Update: Looks like Orson beat us to the punch and we missed it.
10 comments:
Travis kind of alluded to this, but my favorite part of any JP broadcast was the moment at which one of the Daves -- the old crazy guy in the booth -- would say, "Oh, man, we got a game going here!" No game was too meaningless, uncompetitive, or just plain boring for this particular Dave to insist that it was one of the most thrilling games ever. Kentucky's up 7-0 and Vandy scores a TD to tie it just five minutes into the first quarter? Didn't matter -- according to Dave, "We got a game going here!"
Amongst my particular circle of fellow UGA fans, one of us could be counted on to utter that phrase during just about any game we were watching. It got to the point where we were almost in an informal competition to see who could yell it earliest.
It is a shame to see JP telecasts go, they had reached the top of the broadcasting mountain : )
I briefly worked for a JP owned TV station and signed up for some football telecast crew work in the early '90's. I was basically gripping cables and doing grunt work. JP sports is run with a skeleton staff...and I can assure you that it was no small miracle that these games ever reached the airwaves. If you ever enjoyed watching a JP produced game on TV, you should be thankful for viewing it at all. It was seat-of-the-pants television if there ever was any. Anyway, recollecting on my experience with JP, I can tell you I made about $100 bucks for a full-day of work...lost about 15 lbs. in the process. Tough way to make a living.
Say what you will about J-P but many of us fans are grateful for their coverage of the SEC games...those of us who don't have pay for view, game plans, etc. I am always happy to get the Dawgs from whatever source and the early start, over a local NBC outlet, allows me to see the 2:30 CDT start of other key games. Welcome Lincoln Financial!
Ole Miss will never be on TV again.
Didn't JP run a contest a couple of seasons ago in which the "winner" got to help with the production of a JP game?
Can you imagine?
Holding a batch of TV cables at 1:00 on a 97 degree day in Little Rock while the Razorbacks and Commodores do battle in front of a dozing, lazy crowd of 60 K?
How do I enter?!
JP also used to have an ACC basketball package (back in the 70s when there was no SEC basketball package, or SEC basketball, for that matter) that we could access by turning our rotor-controlled TV antennas toward Channel 4 in Greenville.
Anyone remember the JP theme song?
"Sail with the Pilot;
At the wheel;
Sailing on a ship;
Sturdy from its mast to its keel."
You hear that about 15 times while trying to watch David Thompson beat Carolina and sticks with you.
Central Time Zone? Try Pacific, dude. GameDay comes on at 7.30 a.m. - fortunately is has been less and less must-see TV recently. The JP game and the craptacular Big10 ESPN2 Pam Ward Special come on at 9.30 a.m. It's pretty trippy.
The cool thing is that there is no staying up late into the night with toothpicks in the eyeballs watching the good late games out West. The "10.30" PAC10 game is finished by 10.30 out here, and then you can go out on Saturday night.
As long as Golden Flake is still the official potato chip of the SEC then you can call it what you like.
I can't remember what stinker of a game it was, but I always loved how they rarely had nice camera angles for instant replays, and in one case in particulular 2 or 3 years ago, they didn't even have a goalline view of a controversial call (as in did the ball cross it or not?). I used to post regularly on the old SST board, and that Scott McKinney guy from there was somehow affiliated with JP. He supposedly took my suggestion of "better camera angles" into consideration anyway...
Try HST, that's right, Hawaii Standard Time. I've gotten up at 7 am to watch the Dawgs play Vanderbilt or whoever and paid 20 bucks for it. I would love to get JP sports.
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