America is a sports-loving nation, no doubt about it. This admiration for the athletes has allowed for the rise of a monopoly in the sports broadcasting field: ESPN. Over the years the network has grown bigger and bigger, covering more sports and drawing bigger games away from the non-cable networks.

The main program on this goliath of a network is Sportscenter: which has been for a while the go to place for any sports news one could want. But now almost thirty years after its launching date some people have finally taken the time to satirically look at Sportscenter, and of course those people would be from The Onion. The wildly popular news organization has captured many fans with their satirical and mocking way of news reporting. This online news organization came into existence back in 2007 and has since released countless fictional and real news stories.

But now The Onion has come to the small screen with their Sportscenter mocking show SportsDome. The show debuted on January 11 on Comedy Central, and will have weekly shows on Tuesdays. The Onion will also premiere their news network program, The Onion News Network, January 21 on IFC.

As for SportsDome, the show doesn’t hurt the celebrated image of The Onion, but in all honesty it won’t really elevate it. The show is half an hour in length, and there is no doubt about it, the show is funny. Whether they were making such ridiculous stories as the Milwaukee Brewers selling for $45 or the new basketball rules proposed by the Miami Heat, they undoubtedly won some laughs. The thing is after about fifteen minutes of watching it I was worn out, the half an hour just seemed to drag on after that. I actually had to show some intense will power to not change the channel.

Another surprising aspect of the show was how similar it was to Sportscenter. Sure I could tell they were making fun of it, but it really wasn’t that original. But please don’t take what I’ve said and think that this is one abysmal piece of programming, because it is not. It just could be so much better.

So if you’re looking for some unsophisticated humor check out the SportsDome, just don’t expect it to become The Daily Show of the sports world, because not even The Onion can achieve that.