In a few months, I’m going to sink into depression. It won’t be because the Miami Dolphins will be 0 and whatever and it won’t have anything to do with the Orlando Magic embarking on a 4-win season. My misery will stem from 30 Rock airing its final episode and NBC turning its back on one of the greatest comedies in TV history in favor of low hanging fruit like Guys with Kids. But that’s what happens when only a few million people tune in. The Two and a Half Mens of this world win.

One of the many – many, many, many – reasons that I love 30 Rock and consider it in the same category as Seinfeld and Cheers is because of the writing and the lines that most people don’t even hear. With 30 Rock, there’s always a main joke, but beneath that first layer is another layer and another layer, which makes each episode as re-watchable as the next. And within those jokes and layers are some of the smartest and funniest sports jokes that have ever been written for a sitcom.

I actually started working on this before Brandon started this wonderful series, and I had about 60-something scenes and jokes picked out, but I narrowed it down to my favorite moments. Enjoy and reflect, because after this season we’ll have to hope that Tina Fey and Co. take their talents elsewhere.

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Let’s rock.

Each week, Sports On TV looks at the 20 (or so) greatest sports-related moments from television shows that aren’t always about sports. This week we tackle the low-brow 1987-97 FOX classic ‘Married… With Children’, and honestly, it’s the closest we’ve come to saying f**k it and just writing about sports shows. MWC featured more sports moments and guest appearances than almost any other sitcom, and even featured a sports moments clip-show in the middle of its 10th season. Instead of just finding that on YouTube and posting it here, we’ve put together our own list.

The entire run of ‘Married…’ is currently streaming on Netflix, so if you read about Al Bundy punching a heavyset lady in the stomach or beating a bunch of old people at track and field and want to check it out, you can do so there. If our top 20 didn’t feature your favorite moment, be sure to drop down into the comments section and let us know what we missed.

But for now, enjoy the 20 greatest sports moments from ‘Married… With Children’. Let’s get the greatest moment in television history out of the way first …

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During this year’s Summer Olympics, NBC’s best play-by-play analyst was Retta, who plays Donna on ‘Parks And Recreation’. Her tweets about chocolate tumblers and the Olympics trying to break a bitch were amazing, and as sports bloggers it’s our duty to shine the spotlight on every legitimately hilarious person who touches sports.

Not only is Retta’s show one of the best on television right now, it’s also one of the most sports friendly. That makes it a perfect fit for Sports On TV, our column dedicated to the best sports moments of shows about something other than sports. This is the first still-on-the-air show we’ve attempted to cover, so if you’re reading this a year from now and are all, “HEY, WHERE’S THE EPISODE WHERE MCKAYLA MARONEY SHOWS UP AND ANDY WINS THE LONG JUMP” or whatever, give us a break, we aren’t time travelers.

With greatest possible love to Retta, Michael Shur, Greg Daniels and the rest of the talented people making my favorite 30 minutes of any given week, here are our 20 favorite sports moments from ‘Parks And Recreation’. I don’t know what this is, but I want you to read all of it.

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On the last installment of Sports On TV, we tackled ‘The Wire’, a romanticized look at inner-city life and law in Baltimore, Maryland. If we drive an hour, then get into a fight on a basketball court and fly across the country, we’ll be ready for ‘The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’, the 1990s sitcom that launched rapper Will Smith into mega movie stardom and gave ‘Silver Spoons’ star Alfonso Ribeiro an awesome paycheck for like seven years.

‘The Fresh Prince’ is one of my sentimental favorites (as longtime readers of The Dugout may know), so I was excited to tackle its 20 Greatest Sports Moments. I got something like 15 just from season 1 guest stars. Biggest possible thanks goes to Josh Koebert for helping me out with the images. Follow him on Twitter, he deserves your love for making this happen.

You’re probably already singing the theme song in your head, so let’s make this happen. The 20 greatest sports moment of ‘The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’.

/high-five
/pshhhh

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"Where's Ben Wallace, String?"

HBO’s ‘The Wire’ is the best TV show ever made. There, I said it.

In 5 seasons over 60 episodes, David Simon’s law and streets epic was literature on television, an experience so dense and rewarding that it somehow managed to simultaneously depict life in Baltimore as realistic and hyper-romanticized. It’s one of those things you’ve either seen and worship, or have resisted all your friends screaming OH MY GOD YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE WIRE NO SERIOUSLY BORROW MY DVDS AND WATCH IT for like ten years.

This week’s Sports On TV column is in reverence to this masterwork of Orioles jokes and cereal references, and my only real disclaimer is that there are tons and tons of spoilers inside, so it’ll work best if you’ve seen the entire run of the show. If you haven’t, you should still click through … out-of-context Wire quotes are like gold, glittery paint on the Internet and should be experienced.

And yes, I took notes on a criminal f**king conspiracy.

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Previous ‘Sports On TV’ columns (for ‘Saved By The Bell’ and ‘Full House’) have been fun to write but a pain to suffer through for research, because seriously, have you tried watching an 8th season episode of ‘Full House’ in 2012? Those columns sorta celebrate the badness of sports on TV, and how they get shoehorned in when people run out of love triangles and job jokes don’t have anything to write about.

So it’s with great pride that I present the third ‘Sports On TV’ effort, celebrating the 25 best sports moments from one of the best and most under-appreciated animated comedies ever made, FOX’s ‘King Of The Hill’. If you haven’t seen it before or just flip past it when you’re looking for ‘Squidbillies’ episodes on Adult Swim, the show’s entire 13-season run is available on Netflix streaming and is one of the best ways to spend 130-ish hours. What made the sports on ‘King Of The Hill’ great is that they aren’t accessories to the action … they’re focal points, important or not, just like in real life.

I’m lucky to have some great guest columnists this week, so I hope you enjoy the list. And yeah, there are at least 40 other moments we could’ve included here, so consider this part 1 of an eventual 50 Greatest Sports Moments Of ‘King Of The Hill’. We’ll loop back around when I realize Golden Girls didn’t have 20 sports moments on it.

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