Here in Chicago, it's been off the air for a couple of months now, but it's all over for "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" nationally. FOX Sports Net has officially pulled the plug on the show that mixed lively sports talk with various celebrity not necessarily sports-related such as "The Shield's" Michael Chiklis, former "Baywatch" babe Pam Anderson, and many others. It seems hard to believe, but FSN launched the show in 2001 with host Chris Rose, joined by Tom Arnold, John Salley, Michael Irvin, John Kruk & sports anchor Lisa Guerrero from the show's homebase inside the FOX Television Center in Los Angeles. While Rose & Salley remained on the show until the end, "Best Damn" had a rotating door of different co-hosts once Arnold, Kruk, Irvin & Guerrero all left the show within the first couple of years. D'Marco Farr, Leeann Tweeden, Lisa Dergan, Rob Dibble, Rodney Peete & Amanda Beard all appeared as co-hosts and contributors once the original co-hosts had left the show. Part of the reason why "Best Damn" is no more had to do with the constant reruns of theme shows, such as replays of the old FX show "Toughman", "Top 50" countdowns, etc. and far less fresh shows on a given week. Also, thanks to the nagging recession, not even FSN was immune, as parent company News Corp. recently announced cutbacks in studio production of its national shows. For those who watch FOX Sports' MLB coverage every Saturday afternoon, the cutbacks are very evident with Rose hosting a scaled-down pregame show from the stadium of one of its feature games instead of the confines of the FOX Television Center.

I stopped watching that show a looooonnng time ago.

Remember when Chip Caray was here and since he doesn't curse he would always refer to it as "The Best Darn Sports Show Period"

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc0aM-TNkdI

this was the only good thing to come out of that show

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team Mully & Hanley
team Meatpants

Two of the show's memorable moments came early on. One involved Shaquille O'Neal kicking Tom Arnold's ass. The other involved Arnold getting hit from behind by former wrestler turned Speed TV host Bill Goldberg with a chair.

I would love to see Kornheiser and Wilbon go at it like that.

Crosscheck, I wonder why FSN didn't call either FOX News Channel's very own Geraldo Rivera or Jerry Springer when that fight occurred...Long before he became "At Large" on the weekends on FOX News, Geraldo's old daytime show & Jerry's show became synonymous for fights on the set...

A collection of suck could produce nothing but suck...Tom Arnold and John Salley?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Before joining Patti Blagojevich and the irritating camera whores known as Heidi & Spencer from MTV's "The Hills" on NBC's "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!", John Salley & Chris Rose were the ONLY holdovers from the original lineup of "Best Damn" prior to its cancellation earlier this week. In recent months, on the rare occasions "Best Damn" taped a fresh episode, John & Chris were joined by Charissa Thompson as the third co-host on the show. Charissa had co-hosted another FSN show called "The Baseball Report" before joining "Best Damn" earlier this year. Viewers of the FOX-owned Big Ten Network, DIRECTV 610, got to know this blonde as the sideline reporter on BTN's featured football game Saturday afternoons during the fall, plus also worked a few regional NFL games on FOX Sports in a similar role. If anyone's looking for a Charissa fix, she's now on "Big Saturday Night" on GSN: The Network for Games, DIRECTV 309. During commercial breaks on "20Q" with host Cat Deeley from "So You Think You Can Dance" and "The Money List" with veteran KNBC Los Angeles sportscaster Fred Roggin, Charissa's one of the co-hosts of "Big Saturday Night", in which you & me can actually win a lot of money by calling or logging onto GSN.com between 7-10p (CT) and participating in Interactive games, complete with a live studio audience. Charissa's co-hosts are former "MAD TV" cast member Keegan Michael Kay & former "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" intern and "Insider" contributor Ross "The Intern" Mathews. Ross "The Intern" is as annoying as onetime former Stooge Joe Besser in the sense that he whines like Joe used to do!

Best Damn Sports Show was a somewhat fun show to watch when it was new... my sophomore or junior year in college. It wore out FAST.

As much of a trainwreck it became, it was probably the longest lasting, and most successful Fox Sports Net original program (and that doesn't say much).

Other FSN original programs that I remember... all of them short lived for the most part.
- No clue what they were called but there were two different sport-themed game shows... one of them involved some looney announcer who would randomly sing "speed balls! speed balls! speed balls!..."
- The Sports List (only watchable because of the cute Summer Sanders)
- Beyond the Glory... actually a good show, around the dark themed promos they often came with
- Totally NASCAR (eventually moved to SPEED TV)
- Baseball Max
- Baseball Today (at the same time when ESPN 2 launched Baseball 2 Day on late Sunday mornings)
- Fox Sports News
- Keith Olbermann Evening News (Sunday nights)
- National Sports Report (later followed by the Regional Sports Report)
- FSN Final Score (might still be around)
- Goin' Deep (hosted by Joe Buck, in the late 1990's)
- Hardcore Football (featuring Ronnie Lot and other analyst on Thursday nights, in 1998)
- NFL This Morning (later became the NFL Show)
- The Last Word (originally with Jim Rome and Wallace Matthews, or Chris Matthews, can't remember, a NY guy... show eventually became Rome's solo show)
- I, Max (Max Kellermann and Michael Holley)

You left off their coverage of darts...that was some good shit...

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!!!

A few updates about FSN shows that didn't necessarily last long when they aired. First, Wallace Matthews originally co-hosted "The Last Word" with Jim Rome. Wallace was a sportswriter with the New York Post when the show originally debuted. They gave the satellite quite a workout with Rome in Los Angeles & Matthews in New York before Jim took over the show solo. Also, Chris Myers replaced Joe Buck as host of "Goin' Deep", and I believe their claim to fame was their coverage of the scandal that was the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Also, long before Lisa Guerrero was on "Best Damn", she was on another FSN show called "Sports Genuises". It was a sports trivia game show which was hosted by a guy who could've been the Cubs' PBP if Len Kasper said no, Matt Vasgersian. Matt now splits time between MLB Network and FOX Sports during NFL season, while Lisa G. has a couple of things going on, I believe. One, she's on "Hollywood Heat" as a correspondent on truTV, DIRECTV 246, and at last check, she's also a Los Angeles-based correspondent on Deborah Norville's syndicated "Inside Edition", which airs weekdays @ 3p on ABC7 locally. I've also seen Lisa G. guest star on a couple episodes of "George Lopez" and as a celebrity juror on the syndicated "Jury Duty". You can find both shows on WCIU 26 "The U", but you may want to set the DVR for "Jury Duty". It airs at 3:30a weekdays on "The U"...

I watched it in 2001-02. People do odder things when they are single and bored. Shaq's big toe... wasn't it one of the segments?

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"It's not exactly a rocket surgery." D.J.