Something called The Cauldron says:

NBC, CBS and FOX have all tried — and failed — to loosen ESPN’s chokehold on cable sports because they have all been unable to grasp one very simple rule:

You can’t out-ESPN ESPN. …

The fact that CBS Sports Network isn’t even recorded by Nielsen speaks for itself, but meanwhile, ESPN averaged over 7 times the viewers as its nearest competitor during both day time and prime time broadcasts.

How is this possible, you ask? The answer is actually quite simple: None of the new sports networks have learned from the mistakes of its predecessors.

CBS Sports Network has toiled in obscurity for a decade since CBS acquired College Sports TV for $325 million in 2005 — where I was working at the time. First, it failed to compete with ESPN’s college sports’ coverage as CBS College Sports Network. And then it failed again after pivoting in 2011 to become a general sports network rebranded as CBS Sports Network.

A microcosm of the channel’s failure, CBS Sports Net’s one major splash to improve ratings, hiring Jim Rome in 2012, went down in flames with his daily show lasting less than two years.

NBC was next up to bat by morphing Versus into the NBC Sports Network in 2012, and hiring Michelle Beadle away from ESPN to be the face of the network with their version of “SportsNation” called “The Crossover.”

Beadle later described her former co-host Dave Briggs as a “talentless hack” and the entire NBC Sports Network experience as “a hot mess,” which gives you a pretty good idea of how that experiment went.

Then came along FOX Sports 1, which was launched two summers ago, billed as a real challenger to ESPN’s throne with Rupert Murdoch’s money and power behind the project.

The network made big-time hires in Gus Johnson and Erin Andrews, launched its own versions of “SportsNation” (“Crowd Goes Wild”) and “SportsCenter” (“FOX Sports Live”), was part of a $3 billion rights deal with the Pac-12 that it shares with ESPN, and gobbled up the rights to Big East basketball.

Yet almost every move FS1 has made has failed miserably.

Andrews was moved from college football to the NFL after one year of FOX’s disastrous college football pre-game show. Crowd Goes Wild was quickly cancelled, FOX Sports Live is dwarfed by SportsCenter, and FOX’s college sports coverage gets crushed by ESPN. …

CBS Sports Network is currently on a ventilator somewhere, while NBC Sports Network seems content having the rights to the NHL and English Premier League soccer. FS1 continues to double down on its investment, as evidenced by the recent hiring of former “First Take” producer and “Embrace Debate” artist Jamie Horowitz.

But moves like that suggest FS1 remains blind to repeating its mistakes all over again, trying to replicate ESPN’s success by bringing in former Bristol employees, and copying The Worldwide Leader’s shows.

That’s a fool’s errand.

If FOX were to hire Skip Bayless (his contract is up soon, by the way), ESPN would just replace him with another stooge to stir shit up while FOX’s knockoff goes and draws a fraction of the Mothership’s audience.

The lesson, at this point, should be clear: Instead of trying to out-ESPN ESPN, sports networks need to be the anti-ESPN.

The irony of FOX Sports 1 not understanding this rule is that it’s the same credo Murdoch used to make FOX News so successful.

Nobody thought there was space for another news channel when FOX News launched in 1996 with CNN already firmly established and MSNBC having recently launched. But FOX News’ Roger Ailes had the ingenious idea of cornering an untapped market: Conservatives who hate the “liberal media.” While FOX News is universally panned by industry insiders, it’s the 800-pound cable news gorilla that routinely trounces its primary competition.

Likewise, there are A LOT of sports fans out there that really hate ESPN and would love an antidote to the “Embrace Debate” culture that has spread to SEVEN daily debate shows on the network. Those fans just haven’t found an alternative yet.

If I were in charge of FOX Sports 1, my motto would be: FS1 is going to be the sports blog of cable sports networks — funny as hell and totally unfiltered. I’d start by canceling “FOX Sports Live” and replacing it with a sports version of “The Man Show” that mixed in sports with on-air drinking, comedic skits and girls jumping on trampolines.

Would it be shameless? Yes. But so is all of FOX News, and it’d also be ten times better than watching a poor man’s “SportsCenter.” Just imagine a sports version of “The Man Show” that, say, paired original co-host Adam Carolla with Bill Simmons and a daily segment narrated by Simmons called, “Why ESPN Sucks.”

The second thing I’d do is get former “Crowd Goes Wild” host Katie Nolan on the air as much as possible instead of just YouTube clips and a weekly show that airs on Sunday nights (the name, “Garbage Time,” is certainly fitting if nothing else). She’s the only creative and original thing FS1 thing has done to date.

Nolan isn’t alone when it comes to potentially available talent, either. For example, Spencer Hall of SB Nation and Drew Magary of Deadspin are Internet stars with huge, loyal followings that would tune in to watch them whenever they are on TV. They’re also widely respected within the blogosphere, making them polar opposites of Skip Bayless.

I’d also build out FS1’s daytime programming with stark alternatives to ESPN’s debate shows. How about a parody of First Take called Last Take? Instead of debating mindless things like, “Could a 52-year old Michael Jordan beat LeBron James?”, Hall and Magary could mockingly argue over the question, “Could the cadaver of Babe Ruth hit a home run off Clayton Kershaw?” with Nolan as the moderator.

These suggestions may fly in the face of conventional television programming wisdom, but pretty much every single executive instinct of the suits at CBS, NBC, and FOX has been wrong.

So perhaps Jerry Seinfeld had it right. “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”