You know one of the casualties of the National Hockey League lockout was their exposure on ESPN. ESPN decided that when Hockey returned that they weren’t going to pony up what the NHL wanted, and decided to go without the Coolest Game on Ice. Hockey already suffered from terrible ratings as it was, and the loss of exposure on ESPN (banishing ’em to OLN) won’t help that. That’s not my point here, really.

If ESPN was worried that Hockey wasn’t going to bring in ratings, what do I see tonight advertised on the channel? A friggin Spelling Bee! A spelling bee on ESPN? What is that nonsense? Since when did a spelling bee become somthing worthy of being televised on a national sports channel? I seriously think ESPN is heading down the same road to irrelevancy that MTV is at now.

Are they seriously telling us that they think a spelling bee would bring in more ratings and money than the NHL would? Course they’ve got their noses so far up Barry Bonds’ backside anyway, I can’t say I’m completely surprised by this, I guess.