ESPN finally blessed us with 'The Ocho,' if only for a day
ESPN is having a little fun on Tuesday by resurrecting a joke from a 13-year-old movie. The sports media giant finally made "ESPN 8: The Ocho," from 2004's Ben Stiller comedy Dodgeball, a reality, if only for one fleeting day.
The gag in the movie was, of course, that ESPN had been expanding to so many channels that they'd show even the weirdest, most obscure sports like competitive dodgeball.
So, for one day, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017, the network has changed its college sports network ESPNU into The Ocho, featuring more obscure sports like darts, arm wrestling, ultimate frisbee, and even that great middle America past time cornhole.
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Of course, while it's still kinda quirky, the "joke" doesn't really hold the weight it did way back in those halcyon days of 2004. Back then, ESPN didn't have so many networks. "The Ocho" was seen as a funny gag on ESPN's future.
Now, though, in 2017, ESPN has nearly a dozen networks if you include the ESPN-owned SEC Network (showing Southeastern Conference sports) and the Longhorn Network (a channel exclusively dedicated to the University of Texas).
All told, you can choose from nine networks on ESPN's schedule, and its online-only platform, ESPN3, features a bevy of sports like soccer and cricket airing simultaneously.
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Plus, the "joke" of airing some of these more obscure sports is hardly foreign to ESPN. Besides the lesser seen games of ESPN3, the network's past is littered with airings of lumberjack games, cheerleading competitions, and outdoor sports like bass fishing — all a hallmark of the network's early days before it had contracts with most major sports leagues and a vomit-inducing number of SportsCenter reruns and talking head shows.
But, OK, it's still just a bit of fun, and who are we to argue with the airing of cornhole championships?
You just need ESPNU on your cable package and to not get too hung up on, well, everything I just talked about.
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
