When it comes to ESPN, I'm out

I was tempted to say that I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have access to ESPN, but that’s not entirely true.

I do remember the last time: I was a college freshman at the University of Washington in the fall of 1993, living in McMahon Hall and none of the nine guys in my suite brought a television for the first quarter of school.

When I came back from Christmas break, I had a small color television with me, which was quickly augmented by a Sega Genesis where we played “NBA Jam” when we weren’t watching sports.

Then, on Monday night, I returned from five days in Rome, Italy, and found that Disney’s channels were no longer available on YouTubeTV. This is due to what is now referred to as a “carriage dispute.” I am embarrassed that I even know the terminology for this situation in which one company wants more money for its “bundle” of channels than a distributor like YouTubeTV or Hulu or a good old-fashioned cable company is willing to pay. So the channels disappear as the two sides stand, staring at each other to see who blinks first.

I am not mad at anyone over this. I do not think one side is right or the other is wrong. These are two huge companies engaging in a pissing contest, and I hope they both get soaked.

But I also am not paying for the ESPN standalone subscription I would have needed to see Monday’s game between the Cowboys and Cardinals. This is not some principled take on my part nor is it a moral stand. It is a value decision.

I bought the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” on YouTubeTV. To have access to that, I need to continue my subscription to YouTubeTV, which as of now, does not include ABC or ESPN’s channels.

I could get a separate subscription to ESPN. However, I don’t believe what I watch is sufficient to warrant $30 per month.

This is shocking to me: Not the price, but how little of ESPN’s programming I now watch:

• Monday Night Football

• College football games on Saturday, but even then, it’s mostly ACC and SEC and while I do care about some, but not all that much.

That’s about it.

I don’t watch SportsCenter.

I definitely don’t watch any of the arguing shows that air during the day.

I don’t watch “NFL Live” and while I said I’ll watch college football, the ESPN has no involvement with the Big Ten, which is where Washington plays.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid living in Oregon, ESPN was probably the single most formative influence on me as a sports fan. I cheered for Georgetown in college basketball largely because I grew up watching Big East basketball on Big Monday. I later got into UNLV, which was part of the Big West.

I remember how cool I thought it was when ESPN began televising NFL games in 1987 and then MLB games in 1990. In fact, I can remember watching Brian Holman lose his perfect game with two outs in the ninth inning that year because I was watching at home when he gave up the solo homer to Ken Phelps.

The fact that ESPN was something of a cornerstone in my childhood is not particularly healthy. In fact, I can remember my mom being thoroughly (and understandably) annoyed when we moved to California in 1990 because the single most important thing to me was getting cable TV installed in our new house.

I enjoyed watching “NFL Primetime” with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson as much (maybe more) than any individual game. More recently, I absolutely loved its slate of “30 for 30” documentaries.

I’m not going to tell you that ESPN is worse today. It certainly carries more games.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s harder to be a sports fan, either.

You can see more games now than ever before. I have the ability to skip between each and every NFL game on Sundays. I can watch pretty much every Mariners game even though I live three time zones away.

The 15-year-old version of me would be amazed. Back then, the Braves were about the only team whose games were always on TV.

The 50-year-old version of me understands how expensive all this has gotten, though. He also realizes that while “cutting the cord” was billed as an opportunity to pay for only the channels you actually watched, the reality is that it has created a patchwork of competing entities trying to maximize how much money they get for the piece of the pie they happen to control.

It’s not necessarily more expensive to be an NFL fan these days.

It is, however, becoming more expensive if you want to have access to every NFL game, and I’ve reached my limit.