I've held it in so impossibly long that I feel like back in third grade when we took the non-stop trip to the Poconos.
This time, though, it's not my bladder which is causing me so much discomfort.
It's that historically arrogant all-sports network ESPN.
Of course, prior to writing this, I've been tuned into the network roughly 12 straight hours. Addictive is not too strong a term. If you're a sports guy, giving it up would be tantamount to a hunger strike ... abstain and you die.
It's not that it's so frighteningly big and powerful, it's the self-serving nature of the network.
One heartening by-product of obscene wealth is the axiom, "With great privilege comes great responsibility."
Unlike Bill Gates, ESPN refuses to live up to its responsibility as an all-powerful force in sports.
Here are the eight top reasons (it was difficult to pare down from my original list of 87,352) why I hate ESPN.
1. Self-promotion
The way they force ESPN programming down your throat is sickening. They start months in advance and promote non-stop. The most recent example is Kenny Mayne's "Mayne Event."
We'll remember the Mayne ... when his sophomoric show is pulled in a few weeks.
I still wake up in a cold, sweat hearing ads for the Junction Boys (Bear Bryant story) and Season on the Brink (Bobby Knight story) and 8 (Dale Earnhardt story) and those were years ago.
Is there anything worse than "Who's Now"? ESPN breathlessly compares sports greats and near greats based on a series of hard-to-define "it" factors.
The gist of the series is, "Teens and 20-somethings, aren't we just the coolest?"
2. Stuart Scott
The genesis of my hatred for the network was when the Michael Jordan comeback tour made a stop at Foxwoods Casino and Jordan remarked after the game, "Five minutes and I'm out of here, fellas."
So Stuart Scott, the signature self-important windbag on a network of self-important windbags, posed a nonsensical question that took the entire five minutes.
If memory serves, Jordan answered the question the only way humanly possible: "Back at you, Dog."
3. Chris Berman
One night, a former colleague of mine nearly shot up the newsroom when "The Boomer" took his sports nicknames schtick to a frightening nadir while doing highlights of a Seattle Seahawks game.
In his typically understated tone (firemen trying to wake-up families in an inferno aren't as frantic), Berman bellowed, "JON KITNA KITNA AND KABOODLES HIS WAY TO THE TOUCHDOWN!"
Which brings us to ...
4. Corny catchprases
Back in the day, Berman's back-back-back-back homerun call was clever. But when you're force-fed a constant diet of that for a quarter-century, it gets tired, to say the least.
During the steroid era Home Run Derby, that had to be several thousand "back, back, backs" in one night alone.
When "The Big Show" was a smash hit on SportsCenter, all the other personalities had to invent their own phrases to avoid taking a back seat to the clever, loud guys whose careers were taking off.
Oh, what they have wrought.
The absolute worst is John Buccigross' "winner, winner, chicken dinner."
That would get you hooted off Walla Walla public access yet every weekend we have to listen to that drivel.
5. He said it, so it's funny
When ESPN designates one of its personalities as "funny," every time thereafter there is a mandatory reaction from the peanut gallery.
That just compounds the problem with outsized egos like Berman, Scott, Stephen A. Smith, Kenny Mayne and Dick Vitale.
Whenever they say something, no matter how tired and predictable, all their sidekicks, like Pavlov's dog, laugh hysterically while viewers from coast-to-coast cringe and search for their clickers.
6. Dick Vitale
Vitale's schtick became old years ago ... even decades ago.
He just screams at the top of his lungs without a sense of true athletic accomplishment or importance to the game. Yet ESPN leads every other SportsCenter with Vitale's calculated rants and raves.
His legacy will be he made the coach more important than the player. How misguided is that?
Every coach should be in the Hall of Fame. It's laughable, but it's become reality. For nearly 30 years, the omnipresent Vitale has sickeningly fawned over coaches — and now even their assistants — like Coach K. and Dean Smith were the Edisons, Einsteins and Salks of our time.
Bobby Knight chokes a player, mocks his school president and treats everyone he comes across like dirt, no matter, Dickie V. will be gushing about his intensity and graduation rate instead.
7. Kingmakers, kingbreakers
If you are on ESPN, you are big, you are important, you are legitimate, you are it.
Fishing, spelling, poker ... all mainstream sports because ESPN deems them so.
Because ESPN owns the broadcasting rights.
Hockey, what's that? It's not on ESPN, so it is mocked and worse ignored. If the NHL had signed on the dotted line? You and I know it would be a staple on SportsCenter, PTI, Around the Horn, et. al.
Now, 100 million U.S. homes see field hockey as often as ice hockey on The Worldwide Leader.
According to a published report, ESPN's ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, examined ESPN's coverage last year and admitted it received 28 percent less air time on SportsCenter over the previous three years.
8. The king has no clothes
Psssst. I have a secret.
For the last several years, Brett Favre, Thursday night notwithstanding, has been mediocre at best.
From 2003-06, he threw 100 TD passes to 85 interceptions and also fumbled 27 times (losing 15 of them). That will get you benched by a lot of coaches but ESPN continued to fawn over his "childlike enthusiasm" for the game and question the ability of the players around him.
Was the subject broached that Brett is over the hill, uncoachable, or a cancer in the locker room?
Heaven forbid.
Boomer and the boys were still too giddy about his childlike enthusiasm. Which usually manifested itself in a god-awful-game-ending interception.
Just when you didn't think it could get any worse, they covered his retirement and subsequent return with around-the-clock coverage befitting a cure for cancer being discovered.
Last month, the ESPN ombudsman wrote, "Finally, a viewer from Castle Rock, Colo., speaking for himself, me and many others: "I am sick and tired of ESPN's obsession with Brett Favre!"
That's not the only thing you should be sick and tired of.
