If you're under the age of, let's say 30, what you are about to read will literally make zero sense.

Ready for it?

There was a time when Chris Berman was a fresh, funny and very nearly revolutionary figure in television.

I swear it's true. I saw it happen. Now to be fair it was the 1980s -- a decade that also saw folks heap endless praise upon the likes of Tim McCarver, Joe Morgan, Terence Trent D'arby, Don Johnson, Bobby McFerrin, Harry Anderson, Sean Young, Rick Reilly and Toto, among others -- but Berman was pretty damn close to appointment TV when he sat at the SportsCenter desk next to Tom Mees (wonder what he would think of today's SportsCenter?) or Bob Ley 25 years ago.

Believe me when I tell you that the nicknames were not dated -- at least not by 30 years -- and the "Backbackbackback" and "He could go all the way" were part of an attitude and personality that we had never seen anywhere near a sports TV program before. 

And then it all ended, and ended fast. Once Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann took over as the faces of ESPN, Berman's act instantly looked 300 years old. He was Milton Berle as a guest host on the first season of Saturday Night Live. Irony had replaced everyman, and Boomer never adjusted and never appeared interested in adjusting. 

And then the internet was invented and gave us a chance to get together as a community of snarkers (when we weren't looking at porn and stealing songs, and I still feel it was worth risking three years in prison to download the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow duet "Picture") and come to this agreement: Chris Berman has completed the 180 from being in on the joke to becoming the joke, and probably not even worth the effort to parody. 

That was about a decade and a half ago. And with all the changes we've seen to ESPN over the last 15 or so years -- the music videos, the embarrassing fanboy hosts, the ESPY's, Stuart Scott -- Berman has not only survived (and in fact outlasted both Patrick and Olbermann) but has somehow become sort of the Walter Cronkite of the network. ESPN executives always refer to Berman as the most important figure in the history of the network. Probably that's true, at the very worst he's in the top two or three.

And I have to admit, until very recently Berman hadn't bothered me as much as he's bothered others over the years. I never took him seriously enough to get worked up about it. Did he have any credibility? Nope, singing on stage with Huey Lewis, throwing out catchphrases in Nutrisystem commercials with Don Shula, Dan Marino and constantly telling us in interviews about his friendships with players put away any idea that we might be dealing with an actual journalist here. But that was always OK with me, because Berman never even pretended to care about having a single shred of journalistic bona fides.  

But now I'm with just about everyone else who weighs in on "The Swami" (how many times over the last decade has that bit made you laugh?). After trying my best to It's time to go. I'm all for Institutional Memory, I really am. I like it when they bring back George Grande and Charley Steiner every five years or so to host SportsCenter, there's always room in the nostalgia file.

And that should be Chris Berman's role at ESPN in 2011. 

Look, The Home Run Derby isn't supposed to be taken seriously. But is it too much to ask the host of the program to take his job seriously? Berman relied on too much schtick ("This One's Going All The Way To ... Yuma!" -- K.C. Jones leaned less on his starters in 1987 than Berman does on his old act today) and too little on research. Just incredibly forced, he now sounds like a guy trying to sound like he's having a good time. I have no idea if Nomar Garciaparra can add anything of value to a Home Run Derby (though the early results weren't exactly encouraging, he was, uh, shrieking kind of a lot) because he was forced into the Hank Kingsley role next to an epic showdown of mediocrity between Berman and John Kruk.

I get that the derby is an MLB product and some selling will always be a part of it. I'm not expecting anything resembling a serious discussion on why there has been such a dramatic drop in power over the last decade, the word "steroids" will never be uttered during a home-run derby on ESPN. But you would have thought every homer on Monday night was packed with all the drama of Kirk Gibson vs. Eck based on Berman's reaction (a 336-foot homer to right field in the first round can just be left alone sometimes). And the whole Berman package has become too much to deal with at this point, it's simply time to take him out of the ESPN mix (that means no more NFL highlights with Tom "I motivated the Jets to beat the Pats and the coach that they hate" Jackson, no more US Open, no more NFL Draft) and save him for anniversary specials and the semi-annual slap and tickle interview with some Very Important Guy who will only sit down with Boomer, The Swami, Mr. With Leather.

But you and I know that Berman isn't going anywhere. And 25 years from now, when the Patriots draft a wide receiver named Ben King and Berman asks Mel Kiper III if the Drifters are going with him to New England, my grandson will ask me what the old man on TV is talking about.

And I'll have to ask him to trust me when I tell him that Chris Berman was once a fresh, funny and very nearly revolutionary figure in television.

Think he'll believe me?