Our Cricket correspondent, Amar Shah – once, way back when, he worked at ESPN – notified us recently that the Best Damn Sports show was ending this week. He volunteered to write an obit. Since we have seen less than 10 minutes of the show during its lengthy TV run, we obliged.

After nearly eight years on the air, countless guests and more than a 1,000 shows later, Fox’s The Best Damn Sports Show Period comes to an end this week. For a program that no one – even its own hosts – thought would last past the first season, Best Damn leaves a surprisingly inimitable mark in the ephemeral realm of the sports talk show zeitgeist.

When BDSSP debuted on July 23, 2001, critics dubbed it self-consciously crude and low brow.

The original cast started with the spasmodic Tom Arnold, sports reporter Chris Rose, Meatloaf himself John Kruk, former NBA baller Reggie Theus, and NFL Hall of Famer Deacon Jones.

But the show format continued to metamorphose from Daily Show-esque, with Tom Arnold serving as late night show host, to SNL-like. John Salley was even given the Andy Richter treatment. Nothing worked.

“Numerous personnel changes, format tweaks, misguided skits and other general mayhem seemed only to reinforce what critics not-so-creatively redubbed ‘The Worst Damn Sports Show’ within weeks of its launch,” wrote Tom Hoffarth in the Los Angeles Daily News.

BDSSP struggled to find its voice, but eventually, former host Chris Rose was brought back, Nasty Boy Rob Dibble and former Lions quarterback Rodney Peete were hired, and the show revamped to its original couch potato camaraderie.

The show never aspired to compete with such intellectually-rigorous sports programming like HBO’s Real Sports or even match up with ESPN’s lineup of talking heads. It was content being the Animal House of sports talk shows.

I worked on the show in 2007 as an associate producer. From the beginning, there was always the ongoing joke that BDSSP could be canceled at anytime. But no matter. Like Abe Vigoda, it kept surviving.

A friend of mine, a producer on the show, said it best in an email:

“It was always the show I wish there was. Guys hanging, talking sports and shooting the shit, hot chicks and nobody taking themselves too seriously. In a world where it’s always an argument, every topic is debated, broken down and analyzed, we will miss the times where four guys could sit around and just talk about stuff and have fun. The show made athletes comfortable and fans always got to see a different side of them. In a world of BS regurgitated answers, Best Damn will be missed. Sure it was over the top and ridiculous, but that’s what made it great.€

And where else could you meet your childhood crush.

Rest easy Best Damn.

On the Clock – BDSSP NFL Draft Video 2008