Enough, already!

The Collision in the Coliseum. The Clash of the Titans. Armageddon. The sports media, and specifically ESPN, have been working overtime this week to come up with some catchy names for Saturday's college football game between #1 USC and #5 Ohio State. I would suggest Overkill--The Sequel!

Seriously, has any college game in recent memory received this much attention, even a national championship game? Almost as soon as the games ended last Saturday, ESPN went into full overhype mode, filling the airwaves, Internet pages and blogs with nothing but USC-OSU. ESPN News added a "USC-OSU" segment to its on-screen ticker, and we even got a week's worth of old USC-OSU games on ESPN Classic. (Don't believe me? Then check out this, this, this, this, this and ... well, you get the idea). Is there any possible way this game can live up to the hype? (Quick answer: no, and for the record I would expect an easy USC win, especially with Ohio State's best player hurt).

We're getting the full treatment, of course, because ABC (part of the Disney family of networks, along with ESPN) has the game in prime time. So for the past week we've seen what amounts to a major network begging people to watch the game. I suppose some of this is justified when there are roughly 927 football games on TV during the weekend. But isn't there anything else going on in sports? Is the only way to get someone to watch to figuratively scream at the top of your lungs for an entire week?

In the sports TV business they call it "synergy" and "cross-promotion." I have another word for it--annoying. Can the game hurry up and get here so all this can please go away?