I don’t think I had watched more than 15 consecutive minutes of SportsCenter for at least six months. Probably closer to a year since I’ve watched 30 minutes in a row. For some reason on Friday, I turned it on, and kept it on.

What a mistake.

It’s no wonder the Yankees and Red Sox have such high payrolls, the revenue they pull in is amazing, with ESPN pulling the bandwagon. The fact that these two teams aren’t from two of the top five or so biggest cities in American helps, sure, but aside from cities that have teams, which you have to assume have a fairly decent stranglehold on the fanbase, the rest of the country doesn’t stand a chance.

Take Indianapolis, for example. There’s a solid Triple-A franchise here, and in two or so hours you can make it to games in Chicago or Cincinnati. Open that window up to four hours, and you can include St. Louis and probably Detroit as well. But there’s no “hometown” team to follow, not even a “home state” team. That leaves the Indy market up for grabs for fans, basically. When SportsCenter takes the first 10 minutes of every show to let us know how Tom Freakin’ Gordon’s elbow is feeling, or the top notch job the Red Sox equipment manager did washing the jockstraps the night before, I can’t help but feel physically ill. In fact, it pisses me off.

When kids (of all ages) in these “middle grounds” of fan bases look to find a favorite team, but have none in the general area, of course they’re going to pick the team(s) that are on ESPN every night, and have a third or more of each night’s SportsCenter (not to mention Baseball Tonight) dedicated to them. In turn, those kids buy hats, shirts, jerseys, etc., and the marketing dollar lets the rich get richer while the other 25 or so teams spin their wheels.

On top of that, Friday’s SportsCenter was a Michelle Wie-a-thon, and while I don’t really care much for some things I’ve read about her anyway, ESPN anchors telling me that “everyone’s pulling for her” made that back-nine implosion much easier to cheer for.