It's on ESPN Classic. I've watched about half of the first episode and I was amused. This is like ESPN Classic meets MST3000. Two guys (I think they're twins) do voiceover bits to old sports footage. The premiere had clips of the old Mid-South Pro Wrestling federation or alliance or whatever. It was kind of funny. I always did like the Iron Sheik. The clothes and hairdos are a hoot and a half.

I thought it was pretty funny. Plus they get bonus points for utilizing Michael Showalter at the beginning. Long live "The State"!!

Wow, that episode last night, where they watched the classic Cal-Stanford game, was fantastic. I laughed my ass off. Ted McGinley references! C.A.C.! That Guy from 'Upright Citizens Brigade'! It was goddamned hilarious. "That was one of the greatest 82-foot college football games I've ever seen..."

Inappropriate cheerleading. The Magic Ball Theory. Hee.

Man, they had crappy referees, broadcasters, camera men and graphics people in 1982, too.

I lost it every time they started chanting, "Nerds, nerds, nerds," on the crowd shots. Hurray, for MSTing sports! Can't wait to catch this wrestling episode.

How many different episodes have there been?

I can't tell. The guide data on my TiVo is pretty generic. Last night it recorded the wrestling show again.

Yeah, last night they totally showed the first one, with the mid-south wrestling, again. I don't get that. I mean, I laughed, but I was hoping for something new. What's the deal?

Anybody know what's going on with this show? It had a big run of two episodes and went into rerun mode.

Last night was the first chance I'd gotten to see the show, and I really loved the cliff-diving stuff. I switched to Chappelle's Show in the second half, so I only saw bits of the wrist-wrestling (though I did like their mocking the guy who attended the no-prize-money wristwrestling tournament while his wife was home about to give birth).

And whichever of them was doing the Keith Jackson impression had it down pretty well.

You gotta love it when every time the old, fat Mexican cliff diver hit the water they showed footage of the Bikini Atoll H bomb test and various hurricanes and tsunamis. Funny.

Love, love, loved the National Spelling Bee episode! Good host segments, great commentary -- just snark-a-minute fun, with some "aww" moments thrown in (they were rooting for that "Christine" kid, how cute!).

"Pull that out of your fingers, freakshow" is still making me laugh. I know that everyone and his grandmother's made fun of Rebecca Sealfon, but it won't ever stop be funny to me. She's the real-life embodiment of those homeschooled spelling-bee kids from South Park.

I think I have a wee bit of a crush on Randy. He's the more crazed/wired of the two, and I kinda like that.

Even though it's forty seven varieties of bad wrong to make fun of teenagers on national tv, the Spelling Bee show was funny as shit. I feel really bad for any guy who's tried to get anywhere with Ms. Sealfon unless it truly is P. Diddy, in which case I say "Ha! ha!".

This show should be on Comedy Central. It's a great premise but it seems to take three weeks to produce one frickin' show.

We do get a new one this week (Rollerball! It's about time!), so maybe they're speeding things up. One can hope.

Forgot to say earlier that my favorite part, besides the line I quoted, was Sean Salisbury's "Breakdown" segment on that one kid's hubris (if it's pronounced like "doyen," it isn't going to be the feminine version, "doyenne," you ninny!). It took me out of the show, into a SportsCenter zone, but that just made it all the funnier. Sean seemed to enjoy himself, too. He even got to swear!

How about Ed Helms showing up on Cheap Seats last night? The Sklar brothers must be pretty popular.

Pretty decent episode, what the hell was with the "goodgollytheretheygoandtheyareunderway" announcer?

AND it's another new episode next week: the '78 World Strongest Man competition. I think i saw it a long time ago (when ESPN 2 had the "Extreme" logo), and Lou Ferrigno was on it, and it was actually hosted by Brent Musburger. Should be a fun one.

is there a rhyme or reason as to when the new episodes air? The guide data for it on my Tivo is terribly generic. In other words, what was the day/time for the spelling bee episode? The two that reside on my Tivo I haven't watched are the one that start with the Cliff Diving stuff and the Steve Garvey fishing show.

I like Ed Helms but I thought his bit went on too long. The old lady with the pocketbook was pretty funny. Roller Derby really was better entertainment than pro wrestling. It's a shame it's died out.

This is a really good show. They need to stop throwing money away on crap like Dream Job and produce more episodes of this.

Its on Wed. nights at 10pm

I just watched the "World's Strongest Men" episode, and I was rolling on the floor when that knucklehead almost got run over by the 7000 pound truck he was pulling. I'm going to hell.

Actually, that was the *only* redeeming part of that hour. that episode sucked.

re: Ed Helms on Cheap Seats a couple of weeks ago:

Hepatitis B + Hat Night = $$$

A little scary, but great.

How many episodes of Cheap Seats have been made? The first episode I saw was the Wide World Of Sports one back in late March, I think.

What did 'yall think of the "Superdogs! Superjocks!" episode last night? I thought they did too many (what is the word to describe it?) intrruptions? I can't even name them all. That Superdogs! Superjocks! thing must have really really sucked for them to only make fun of about 35 minutes of it.

they could've just shown the thing in it's entirety with no commentary and it would have been funny as hell still.

"I can't believe this actually aired on ESPN."

Still my reaction as well, and then I think, "I'd still rather watch this dreck instead of SportsCenter." So, there ya go.

The closing montage of amazing sports moments intercut with the big Super-whatever comeback cracked me up. In fact, I laughed through most of the episode, so I suppose it worked for me.

Watched the rerun of the Spelling Bee episode, too. Still hilarious. We need more shows! Pick up the pace, ESPN!

Totally, it just seemed that they did more sketches than they usually do in the other episodes.

I was watching the repeat Sunday, and it looks like Cheap Seats is moving to a new time on Thursdays @ 10:00 (eastern). I think it was 10:00. 'Better not be 11:00 because that's when Daily Show comes on.

I covet the home game version of Super Dogs! Super Jocks!

The Steve Garvey part of the show last night went waaaayyyyy too long. Probably the worst "Sports" show ever created. At least SuperDogs! SuperJocks! had some kind of competitive nature to it.

And how about a pre-Planet's Funniest Animals Matt Galant hosting the Bobby Bonilla Budwiser Bowling Tournament? How did he get hired again after that?

I can't stand Matt Gallant's voice, he still sounds like he's thirteen years old. I nearly died when I saw that he was in that one "sports show".


Well, both specials had one thing in common (no, not celebrities) but really, really stupid and tacky openings.

I can't possibly express how much I loathe this show.

I can just imagine the programmers at ESPN sitting around the conference table saying, "We need to fill an hour on ESPNClassic."

"Let's just show some football highlights."

"Not another football highlights show."

"Hey, you can never have too much football."

"Oh yeah, I have one world for you -- XFL."

*Bemused silence falls upon the room for a full 90 seconds.*

"I've got it!! We'll get two comedians who aren't funny, and we'll throw together a really crappy set and then show some clips from Wide World of Sports from back in the 1970's and these two guys will comment on it."

*32.3 seconds of silence.*

"So, there are going to be 2 comedians, but they aren't going to make funny comments?"

"No, it's going to be 2 comedians who just aren't funny, even when they are trying to be funny."

*20 seconds of silence*

"Is Carrot Topp going to be one of them? 'Cause he's pretty much a prop comic and I don't think that'd work too well with another comic up there."

"Nah, Carrot Topp is at least occasionally amusing. I'm talking 2 comedians who couldn't get laughs at a nitrous oxide abusers convention."

"Well, what kind of clips from Wide World would we show?"

"All of that whacky, offbeat crap. You know, the roller derby, Battle of the Superstars, cliff diving, all that garbage."

*A full 3 minutes of silence.*

"Tell me again, exactly why another football highlights show would be such a horrible idea?"





This is quite possibly the worst original program that ESPN has ever put on, with the only other contender being that hideous "Win a job as a Sportscenter anchor" reality crap.

I'll be really glad when football season rolls around and ESPN does put another football highlights show on to replace this steaming pile of crap.

When this show is good, it's good. When it's bad, it's really bad. Boring, too.

I have an unnatural affection to ESPN coverage of The Westinghouse Spelling Bee. . . but the Cheap Seats where they review a late 90's episode was brillant, as was the Cal-Stanford game.

I think the only episode that has really bored me was the most of the World's Strongest Men episode. The beginning of the Cal vs. Stanford episode kinda bored me too. And the ending of this past weeks episode wasn't that funny (the bowling part).

Well, Mystery Science Theater Had Some Clunkers too, so...

I agree, this show is either really funny or downright stupid, oftentimes within the same episode. The commercial for the next episode comparing Steve Garvey's haircut to a leggo guy had me rolling. On the other hand, I would be very happy if I never saw the dueling Carson's again.

I see that somebody came to their senses and cut this show to a half hour. I just watched the show about true masculinity as showed on Wide World Of Sports. That was pretty funny. From the power lifters crumbling under the weights to Calvin Murphy in a baton twirling competition, just about every thing brought the chuckles.

This show has about a 50% success rate so i expect the next episode to suck.

I'm torn with the new half hour Cheap Seats, on one hand there's less filler (the bits with one of their comedian friends playing someone--with the exception of the time Ed Helms was on, but of course I'm biased when it comes to Helms. ) but on another the whole show seems really rushed.

That cleb. fishing/bowling tournament episode should have been a half hour though. Good God...

But I still love Cheap Seats.

The 'Hannibal Lecter' spelling bee contestant was laugh out loud hilarious.

Bumped for masterlurker. . .

Thanks. Its funny how sometimes you don't see the things right in front of you.

Tonight's episodes (June 17th)

1994 World Series of Poker - Randy and Jason head to Vegas for the Silver Anniversary of the World Series of Poker. The competition heats up as the winner of this tournament takes home his weight in silver in addition to the $1 million plus prize (10 p.m. ET).


Randy and Jason will watch the 1978 Superstars competition. The biggest sports stars of their day (Steve Garvey, Deacon Jones, Dwight Stones, and Wayne Grimditch - that's right Wayne Grimditch!) battle for a cash purse the equivalent of A-Rod's dry cleaning bill (10:30 p.m. ET).

Nevermind.

I couldn't figure out the Oilers/Red Wings aka Wayne Gretzky's 2nd NHL game show. The game ended as a tie and Gretzky didn't score a goal. I kept expecting something unexpected to happen and it never did. I'm beginning to *hate* their skits.

From the dog/cheerleader show last night: I laughed at "Yo quiero back fat" probably more than it was worth, but ... hee.

I'm missing the hour-long format. Half an hour's just too speeded up for me; I keep fretting that we're missing some prime snark material, and occasional dead-air pauses don't bother me, if the intervening comedy's good. Ah, well. Maybe it's just all the damn reruns (Cal/Stanford again?) that are getting to me.

I didn't realize until I went to the ESPN Classic web site, but...Randy and Jason are brothers! Twin brothers! Are they fraternal? Because they don't look all that alike.

I agree with others that this is a hit-or-miss show. A great concept, though, and their commentary is occasionally hilarious.

I don't know if they're fraternal or identical, but I had a damn hard time trying to tell them apart when they were on Battlebots. Now at least they look like two different people. Different facial hair, different male pattern baldness and one with glasses makes them look very different, but before, it was hard to tell. I guess that's what a few years difference makes.

I only caught parts of this, but after reading this thread, I'll put it on the TiVo so I can watch in speed time.

I caught the show way back in march and I thought it was a neat replacement for MST3K. I didn't watch much else until I caught the Oilers/Redwings epsiode and it was great. They may not have the wit of MST, but they have a humor that is sometimes childish or intelligent. A good balance.

Me too.

And whoever said that they're starting to hate the skits, I agree with that too. (by skits I mean the things with one of the Sklar's comedian freinds) If they would take out that segment, there would be more time to make fun of whatever they're making fun of this week.

---

Someone brought up the fact that there seems to be a lot of repeats, I think ESPN Classic films Cheap Seats whenever Jason and Randy are in town, and they air it the next week. So I guess whenever Jason and Randy aren't in town, they show a repeat?

I hate sports with the fire of a thousand suns and I adore this show. The only other sports show I ever liked was Sports Monster on the Comedy channel about 10-15 years ago.

I almost lost bladder control laughing at the celebrity invitational fishing show and the spelling bee. Oh, and the 70's era wrist wrestling. Good times!

I don't know either, but when they did dueling Foxworthys last week (a terrible bit if there ever was one), I couldn't tell them apart.

The skits on this show are awful as is the music that accompanies the skits. I think the show would work better if they fired at least one of the twins and hired somebody funny.

The show is very hit or miss but the roller derby and 'broken ankle' weight lifting episodes are my favorites.