Part of the fun of watching sports is that you don’t know what’s going to happen. TV shows and movies follow story beats, meaning you can usually get a sense for where things are heading, but sports do not work that way. The totally unexpected can, and does, frequently occur—and that’s the reason people keep tuning in, whether their team is dominating or an underdog.
Sometimes, though, you can’t catch the game live, but still want a bit of that feeling. That’s why leagues offer extended highlights, featuring all the key moments, complete with the commentary from the broadcast. These can feel almost like watching the full game, and I love catching up with them the next day alongside my morning coffee. The problem: you’ll typically find those videos on sites full of spoilers about who won, whether that’s via a scoreboard at the top of the site or headlines blaring the results. If you’re hoping for even a fraction of the fun of watching sports live, that’s a problem.
Don’t Tell Me The Score is your solution. This simple website offers highlights for NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA games, with no scores or spoilers of any kind. The site interface shows only a bunch of icons representing all upcoming and recent games. Color logos means there are highlights are already available, and you can click or tap to start watching.
Credit: Justin Pot
This is my favorite way to catch up on games I missed. The videos, which are sourced from the league’s official YouTube channels, tend to be a little over 10 minutes, meaning you’ll see the highs and lows, but it won’t take up hours of your day, and you won’t know who won going in (provided you’ve also taken care to avoid spoilers via the TV, newspapers, social media, push notifications, or ill-timed texts from friends).
This tends to work really well, with one big hiccup: NFL videos can’t be watched on the site itself, as the NFL prevents their highlights from being embedded on other sites. This means you’ll need to click a link to watch the highlights on YouTube’s website. This is a little annoying, but the YouTube pages usually don’t include spoilers either, as long as you steer clear of the comments.
I wish more leagues were supported—soccer highlights aren’t offered at all, for example, and neither are the increasingly popular women’s leagues. But if you’re a fan of one of the “big four” North American sports, like watching highlights, and don’t want to get spoiled first, Don’t Tell Me The Score is worth adding to your daily rotation.
