Chris Berman

From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.

During the first broadcast of SportsCenter on ESPN, a bear wondered into the studio from the wilds of Bristol, Connecticut and attacked anchor George Grande. Heedless of the danger, a young intern named Chris wrestled the bear away. Both the intern and the bear fell onto a frayed electrical cable left exposed by the technicians of the cut-rate network.

The electricity somehow melded the essence of Chris with the bear, producing a huge, shambling man-beast able to communicate only in dated popular culture references and a series of nonsensical catch-phrases.

The network's producers, in order to avoid a lawsuit, promised to give the lumbering bear-man, or "Berman" in local dialect, a permanent job at ESPN. However, it is allowed only to broadcast about football, baseball, basketball, golf, and hockey, and is kept away from the network's bread-and-butter poker programming.