Underrated sports themes

[TrueYankee26]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

Is that 1989 accurate? I thought it didn't come in till later when they really started pushing ESPNABC synergy, but I could be wrong. It does sound extremely Kalehoffian, and he was certainly doing a lot of themes in the late '80s.

Looked at some YouTube videos of the early 90s and late 80s MNF games and I could not hear it during 1989 games but they played it in 1990

[RyanMcD29]

I'm in the camp that the alternate MNF theme is better than Heavy Action. Heck, I use it as the intro song for doing games at my local high school.

 

For my contribution, I feel like almost every national NHL theme song somehow someway slaps, and one that didn't deserve to slap as hard as it did was the NHL on OLN/Versus theme before they went with that forgettable one for 2010-2011. Clearly the entire budget for the first season of coverage went to paying the music company

 

[The_Admiral]

4 hours ago, TrueYankee26 said:

Looked at some YouTube videos of the early 90s and late 80s MNF games and I could not hear it during 1989 games but they played it in 1990

 

Interesting. Would have guessed 1995-1996. Incidentally, those red/black/yellow graphics and the stacked "Monday Night Football" wordmark go all the way back to 1993, which is also deeper back than I would have guessed.

[Francis10]

15 hours ago, RyanMcD29 said:

I'm in the camp that the alternate MNF theme is better than Heavy Action. Heck, I use it as the intro song for doing games at my local high school.

 

For my contribution, I feel like almost every national NHL theme song somehow someway slaps, and one that didn't deserve to slap as hard as it did was the NHL on OLN/Versus theme before they went with that forgettable one for 2010-2011. Clearly the entire budget for the first season of coverage went to paying the music company

 

I mean, there's no way you're convincing me this wasn't a track off a Castlevania game soundtrack.

[The_Admiral]

Kalehoff did the main Braves on TBS theme from the late '90s, but there was also a secondary theme they used for outros. I'm pretty sure he recycled his Card Sharks theme for it: https://youtu.be/uUbZflOGhsw?t=5915

 

[Unocal]

The 1995-1997 NFL/NBC theme was mentioned but they had some good ones in the previous years

 

1992

 

1993

 

1994

 

Hard to believe those each lasted one year while the next one lasted three

[The_Admiral]

The '94 theme had a hook but the two before that were pretty forgettable. AFC football was not really NBC's core competency at the time. Kinda weird that all three of them were contemporaneous with golden-age Seinfeld, though. Sometimes 1993 feels like just yesterday and other times it doesn't.

 

Does anyone have the NHL on TSN secondary theme, the one they use coming out of HNIC? I think that could stand on its own. I wish the CBC would just get the damn theme back.

[RyanMcD29]

That's kinda the wild thing about the late 80s and early 90s where CBS and NBC were cranking out new theme songs like every year. Hard to imagine in this day and age where the youngest theme of the primary 4 broadcasters is NBC's for all intents and purposes (ignore the remixes and whatnot) at 17 years and that's been around since they got SNF

[The_Admiral]

I used to think the last NFL on CBS theme, the one they picked back up in '98, was what they had been using since their heyday of '80s NFC hegemony. No, only since like 1992. I still miss it, by the way, hate the big loud dumb one they have now, always have. 

 

I think NBC got a decent run out of that slower one from the mid-'80s.

 

Also interesting to learn how much sports music, like game show music, was written by Edd Kalehoff or Bob Israel.

[Alex Houston]

It still amazes me that Roundball was written by John Tesh of all people. Had you put that on Millionaire back in the day, I'd likely be walking home with the $32,000 safe level prize.

 

Also, I'm not sure which the name of it but sometimes the bumper music for the MLB on TNT has a riff that sounds kinda similar to me to the one from "In Too Deep" by Sum 41. I assure you this is a weird comparison that only way weird mind would make, but like that wrestling theme comment DGNow made in that thread about underlying similarities, once I heard it I can't unhear it. 

[The_Admiral]

On 11/6/2023 at 7:32 PM, RyanMcD29 said:

That's kinda the wild thing about the late 80s and early 90s where CBS and NBC were cranking out new theme songs like every year. Hard to imagine in this day and age where the youngest theme of the primary 4 broadcasters is NBC's for all intents and purposes (ignore the remixes and whatnot) at 17 years and that's been around since they got SNF

And politics, which is sports now: NBC has had the same theme for election coverage since 2008.

[BBTV]

I liked this a  lot back in the day.  For a local broadcast, it's pretty good (though I vaguely recall hearing it elsewhere, so they probably yoinked it from some generic library.)

 

 

[The_Admiral]

That overly bright Yamaha piano sound in there is a hallmark of every production music library from 1987-1995.