I don’t really disagree that SportsCenter was better in the old days with Olbermann and Patrick. But I don’t think it’s quite fair to blast the current anchors. They have a much tougher job.

It’s far easier to be innovative in an immature art form. Certainly, you have to be talented to innovate at any time. But when an art form is new, you don’t have a whole library of clichés to battle against. Now, there have been over 25,000 SportsCenter shows. What’s left to do that hasn’t been done before? Is it even possible to avoid clichés at this stage? I think you’d have to be extremely, extremely talented.

Lately, I’ve been mulling what the predictors of quality are in daily art forms (talk shows, comic strips, blogging, baseball play-by-play, etc.) It’s impossible to create great work on a daily basis. You don’t have time to refine things.

Half the battle, I think, is just showing up. Longevity seems to be important in judging the quality of daily art forms. The reason Johnny Carson is viewed as being better than Jack Paar is probably because Carson stuck around longer. 40-year-olds don’t win the Ford Frick Award for baseball broadcasting excellence, 80-year-olds do.

You also need a certain level of competence. The best daily artists have moments where they break through the clouds of routine and let their brilliance shine through. But to get to those moments, they need to show up every day and go through the inevitable motions.

Some daily artists, like Gary Larson and Bill Watterson, won’t accept going through the motions, and quit when they hit the wall of clichés. Others, like Charles Schulz, find a way to change things up (getting Snoopy up on two legs) just enough to keep going.

Which of today’s bloggers will be the Carsons of tomorrow? We’ll see who sticks around for 30 years. In the meantime, damn the clichés, full blog ahead!