Better love American sports. Review on ESPN

Make no mistake about it, ESPN is the place to be if you want to catch all the news on pro and collegiate sports in the U.S. Truly, there's not a whole lot else that makes it on the station. While there's some limited coverage of sports around the world (tennis, golf and the Olympics, in particular), the focus is on U.S. hockey, basketball, tennis and football. Those are just the facts.

As a sports addict, I'm quite pleased with ESPN. The best thing about the station is Sports Center, an hour-long sports shows that features news and highlights from the games of the day. This show is a bit unusual in that it's shown over and over in the wee hours of the morning and at various times throughout the day. The thing that's strange about that is no one seems to mind. In fact, before I was married, I spent every night sleeping in front of Sports Center. See, I would wake up quite a bit during the night and could pick up parts of the show I missed while I was sleeping. That's strange, but true.

As for the general sports coverage on ESPN, it's pretty good. Several college games are shown on ESPN, and the station has exclusive coverage on pro games that don't appear on the networks or other cable channels. That means the odds of seeing my favorite college team (go Arkansas Razorbacks!) or pro teams is increased a bit with ESPN.

Now, there are times when the sports coverage is a bit poor due to a lack of ''real'' games on television. For example, I've seen a bit too much of the NFL Europe on ESPN, and there are times when cheerleading contests and such rot are just no fun at all. Still, just because I hate some of these things doesn't mean there aren't tons of people lining up to watch them.

And, really, that's the value of ESPN, isn't it? Some of the ''off-beat'' and less-popular sports have a better shot of being shown on that channel than on the major networks or other outlets. If the goal of ESPN is to provide good coverage of both major sporting events and minor ones, then the station has done a pretty good job of it.

Now, there is one thing ESPN does that I absolutely hate. Specifically, the station will re-run games every now and again. While some people might find that valuable, I absolutely hate it. That's because I love to see a live game rather than a re-run. Once gain, that's just my personal preference rearing its ugly head.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the NFL films on ESPN. I absolutely love those, as those detail championship games of football teams, focus on great coaches and all manner of fun things. Great stuff!

All in all, this is one of my favorite channels on cable television, and it's a necessary addition to the standard lineup of networks.