ESPN scrambling for Wednesday programming

BRISTOL, CT — With the trade of Brett Favre from the Green Bay Packers to the New York Jets completed late last night, panic struck at ESPN headquarters.

“Boy, was that an unpleasant surprise for the programming people,” said radio host and SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt. “Tough for me too, to be honest. I mean, I went to bed last night thinking I had to be here at 7 AM to start doing some prep for the two-hour ‘Where Will Favre Go SportsCenter Special,’ so I got up crazy early, and now I’m sitting around here with nothing to do.

“For the radio show it’s not as big of a deal, because we can always just have Mikey [Tirico, Van Pelt's radio partner] do some ad-libs on puppies or something. He’s great with that sort of thing. Maybe we’ll break down first-round action at the PGA Championship, or preview Diana Taurasi and the USA Women’s Basketball Team’s road to a gold medal.”

On the television side, however, the situation is far more drastic. According to several sources within the programming department, no plans had been made to fill the 11 AM to 1 PM EST slot on ESPN television as of 9:45 Thursday morning.

“This is utter disaster,” said one television producer who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We definitely thought this Favre thing was going to drag out for another day or two, so we had this whole point-counterpoint thing set up to compare and contrast the Jets and Bucs, and then a little Wheel of Fortune sort of graphic set up where we were going to spin it and see where Favre would land, you know? Well, that’s all useless now.”

Among things being considered to fill the time slot are a previously unaired special entitled “Get Your Ebonics On, with Stu Scott,” and reruns of USA Basketball’s lackluster Olympic tune-ups.

Content changes are also in store for the afternoon broadcast of NFL Live, which had planned to dedicate most of its air time to a Trey Wingo-designed board game – “based loosely on Candyland,” according to Wingo – wherein each players each represent one of the teams Favre could potentially have landed with and race towards the finish, where they can “close the deal,” provided they don’t get stuck in the Kiln Mississippi Swamp or locked up in the Packer Purgatory.

“The good news for us is that we’ve got a few hours to do some planning,” Wingo said. “I’m pretty sure I can make some cosmetic changes to this game and have it be about which of the Dallas Cowboys will do something to mess things up first. And if I can’t get that done, we can just debate that Cowboys issue – you know, without a board game.

“Ideally, obviously, there would be a board game. But I’m just not sure there will be time.”

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