09 May 2005

While griping about the amount of pre-Super Bowl coverage is almost as cliched as "only watching the game for the commercials," I think I've found a new champion in pointless pre-event coverage: the Kentucky Derby.

Thanks to the combined efforts of ESPN and NBC, you could have watched a minimum of eight hours of pre-race programming for an event that takes roughly two minutes. ESPN did pretty much the entire day from Churchill Downs, only stopping when NBC started.

Twenty horses ran the race this year, which means that each horse could have gotten 24 minutes of pre-race coverage. Which only makes it more entertaining that the horse that did win, second-biggest-ever upset-winner Giacomo, got about 12 seconds of pre-race coverage.

I'm also a little irritated that they've pushed post time to after 6 pm. After all the pointless pre-race filler, the extra time for pointless post-race filler is just piling on.

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