ESPN “totally spaced” on airing fourth game of WNBA Finals

BRISTOL, CT — ESPN Director of Programming Dan Portman was fined $100 and stripped of his parking space Friday after the fifth-year executive “completely bricked” on airing the fourth game of the WNBA Finals.

“I just really screwed the pooch on that one,” Portman said. “I was sitting there all week long thinking, ‘There’s something else that I should be doing. There’s something else that I’m missing.’ But I simply could not remember what it was.”

Portman said, in his defense, that he asked several other ESPN employees if they could think of any other events that he had failed to schedule, but none of them came up with anything.

“Scott Van Pelt thought maybe I was thinking about the Arena League draft, but it turns out that is later in the year,” Portman said. “Linda Cohn thought it was the Drum Corps International Finals, but I had that on the schedule. And Stuart Scott wanted to make sure we had some poker on the telly, but obviously we had plenty of that. None of us could come up with it.”

The error was realized early Friday, when a WNBA official called ESPN to ask the proper address to which the game film should be mailed. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, I think we forgot,’” said Tamika Johnson, 19, the receptionist who took the initial phone call. “But I played it cool, I didn’t let on, I just went and told my manager.”

ESPN took total responsibility for the programming lapse in a statement released at noon Friday – “We regret the error and apologize sincerely to the WNBA, its players, its fans, and especially both of the teams that are in the finals. We have taken measures to ensure that this will never happen again, and we will resume our coverage of the WNBA finals with the fifth game of the Series. Also, for interested parties, we will be showing the fourth game of the Finals in full on ESPN Deportes, from 2 to 4 am Eastern, on Sunday.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!