Television shows based around sports have always been a bit of an enigma to me.  While I appreciate the need to represent the theme of athleticism on TV it seemed the audience for such a show would be tuning into other programming.  That would be actual sporting events, specifically.

This obviously put a series like Sports Night in a difficult predicament.  The perceived core demographic is either out playing sports, or watching it on TV (instead of this show) and the remaining viewing audience thinks they need to be sports fans to understand the content.  Even with a tagline of, “It’s about Sports.  The same way Charlie’s Angels was about law enforcement.” the inherent misperception of who Sports Night was trying to capture as an audience is the most likely reason the series lasted only two seasons.

Trust me when I say, this may have been one of the greatest upsets in television history because Sports Night is simply one of the best shows I’ve watched.  It was deserving of overtime, and I’ll tell you why after the jump.