Time to put poker where it belongs - Sports of Sorts

Generally, I put nothing but the utmost faith in the fine people in charge of programming at ESPN. I'll watch anything they put on TV. I watched almost all of Four Minutes, even though it was terrible. I watch Around the Horn,even though I still don't really understand how it works.

Let's just say that if the Worldwide Leader ever decides to broadcast the five-hour version of Pride and Prejudice, I would probably watch it -- especially if they had Stuart Scott doing the segues back from commercials. Holla at your boy!

With that said, I'm sick of seeing poker on TV. ESPN needs to realize that the poker craze is a thing of the past. It's time for them to throw in their chips. Watching them continue to burn hours of programming every week on something this far past its prime is like seeing the last handful of people on campus who still pop their collars, oblivious to the fact that everyone else realized it was an idiotic trend six months ago.

It's not that I'm against poker, or even against ESPN branching out to less traditional programming -- after all, the "E" in ESPN does stand for "entertainment." ESPN also broadcasts the National Scrabble Championships and the Scripps National Spelling Bee, both of which I love.

But the whole point of those shows is the irony. After all, there's nothing funnier than seeing clutch performances out of people who live with their parents (and I apologize to all the professional Scrabble players who don't). You turn on the show, you laugh at the unintentional comedy the competitors provide, and in some cases, they even get a few minutes of fame, like that kid who fainted at the spelling bee last year.

The 2005 installment of the World Series of Poker, on the other hand, received 12 hours of coverage, which have been replayed ad nauseam. You can't tell me that televised poker is that big when the World Series' biggest sponsor was Milwaukee's Best Light. That's right, Beast Light. They couldn't even get normal Beast!

And ESPN keeps trying to focus on the competitors, not the competition. If people are watching the show, it's because they care about poker, not a bunch of fat guys in reflective sunglasses. As I write this column, ESPN just showed a main event table that had a guy in a Hawaiian shirt, a middle-aged Asian woman, and at least three guys who I could have sworn were Hunter S. Thompson.

My friends who like watching poker tell me how impressive these guys are, but I just don't see it. A 13-year-old who can spell "appoggiatura," like Anurag Kashyap, the winner of the 2005 National Spelling Bee, is impressive. On the other hand, Ben Affleck won the California State Poker Championship in 2004. I'm impressed that he can even read the numbers on the cards.

Or take Chris Moneymaker, a poker "celebrity" who is, not surprisingly, a fat white guy who wears reflective sunglasses. In 2003, Moneymaker (yes, that's his real name) won the World Series of Poker, despite the fact that he only started playing poker three years earlier -- after seeing the movie Rounders. How is that impressive? If anything, it makes me question the 839 competitors whom he beat. If I find out that Tom Brady only started playing football after seeing Any Given Sunday, then I'll be impressed.

I'm not saying that athletes who compete in the big four sports deserve some sort of apotheosizing, and I don't think that ESPN should be stuck covering them because they're somehow special. Let's face it, if there was no such thing as baseball, David Wells would be spending his Decembers working at a shopping mall as the world's worst Santa Claus. But nevertheless, poker players shouldn't be on the same level as these guys. They cashed in on a hot trend, and I congratulate them for that. Now please, get them out of my living room.

Moneymaker qualified for the World Series after winning a $39 Internet tournament. I'd like to find a casino where I could bet my life savings on the fact that he wasn't wearing pants at the time. But why would he be? He was just playing a game on the internet.

And that's where I think poker belongs -- on the Internet. Alongside the blogs, porn and other things that interest fat white guys in reflective sunglasses.