The good news is that ESPN and ABC will be televising every single game of the upcoming World Cup live.
I fear, however, that the bad news may be that all those games are being telecast live by ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Given ESPN2's performance during last week's Real Salt Lake-Colorado Rapids game, I'm not entirely sure the networks are up to the task.
I could go on and on about the many defects in that ESPN2 telecast . . . but there's not enough room on this page to provide that kind of detail. So let me just point out the same huge error that was made twice.
Replays. Replays during the game. Replays that prevented viewers from seeing what was happening on the field as it was happening.
On Saturday, the dunderheads at ESPN2 were showing us a replay when a goal was scored. And another replay when there was a hand-ball call that resulted in a penalty kick, which resulted in another goal.
Um, this isn't football, basketball or baseball. You can't leave the action and expect that you're not going to miss some of the action.
Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely pleased and grateful that ESPN and ABC will telecast all 64 games in World Cup play.
I just hope the folks telecasting the game remember this is the soccer kind of football, not the American kind of football.
THERE IS ANOTHER American network that will carry all 64 World Cup games live — Univision will have all the games, telecast in Spanish.
That's on KUTH-Ch. 32 here in Utah.
This could be important to even you non-Spanish speakers for a couple of reasons. First, while ABC/Ch. 4 will air a dozen games, the other 52 will be on ESPN or ESPN2. So if you don't have cable and you can pick up Ch. 32, you've got another way to see the games.
And, second, if what happened four years ago happens again, we might have no other choice.
Ch. 4, you might recall, chose not to air the World Cup final live four years ago, instead airing infomercials. Really.
We can only hope that Ch. 4's management is wiser now than it was then.
If not, there's always Ch. 32.
THAT IT'S POSSIBLE to watch a sporting event that's telecast in a language you don't understand raises the question of how much we really need sportscasters.
The easy answer is — less than they think.
And in some cases, we could do without them altogether. Like when ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian commented on Barry Bonds equaling and then exceeding Babe Ruth's mark of 714 home runs.
"To me, it's the biggest mark in baseball. . . . It's bigger than (Hank Aaron's) 755," he said.
That's so dumb I don't even have to waste effort mocking it.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com