We’ve been together too long to hide this:
I harbor a desire to produce an NFL pregame show, one radically different from all the others as it would be — get this — interesting, entertaining, thoughtful and leave viewers with something worth knowing and to remember.
I figure that decades of hours and millions of dollars wasted would be easily cured.
Crazy, I know.
I’d start by stuffing it with good stuff, the kind seen for a few seconds early this month during a Fox telecast. It was home video of Cowboys’ center Cooper Beebe, hardly a lock to make the cut but now the team’s starter — a position he’d never played — snapping footballs to his mother in someone’s backyard.
I’d sit them down, together, chat them up to present something both inexpensive and worthy of attention and lasting memory.
I’d send a crew to follow veteran NFL umpire Carl Paganelli, a federal probation officer. You wouldn’t watch that as opposed to six guys talking about where the Bears rank against the run after Week 2, then threatening/warning us with, “We’ll be back at the half”?
How about a weekly special to identify and interview the most modest, team-first, polite young gentleman on every team for future and rooting interests among civilized viewers who have no major gambling interest in games?
Once the games begin, the network can revert to its focus, live and in replays, on those most eager to degrade their sport with post-play immodesties for attention that now, for some sustaining mindlessness, TV guarantees.
And the end of every show would include “The Most Ridiculous Celebration of the Week.” Sunday’s would highlight the Browns’ defense, last week against the Giants, gathering in the end zone to perform a rehearsed celebration — that’s what today’s pros now practice during practice — after a TD that was called back for a penalty on that same defense.
And I’d close it with a graphic displaying the final score: The 0-2 Giants beat the favored Browns, 21-15, in Cleveland.
Hey, so many players now so eager to embarrass their sport? Throw a little back their way. What’s the worst that could come of it? Who knows, it may even discourage networks to ease off their habit of hiring the worst just-retired NFL misanthropes from populating their cable shows to make them as insufferable as their pregame shows.
As for the transparently forced, desk-pounding belly laughs that have become a 20-year requisite within pregame shows, I’d give well-aimed cattle prods a shot. And who wouldn’t go out of their way to watch that?
880 AM has become just a hype machine for ESPN
Predictably, ESPN Radio NY’s switch to 880 AM, formerly valued News Radio 880, has loaded up with ESPN promos — sells — posed as content.
Of course, obedient, fragile-psyche Michael “Don’t Call Me a Shill” Kay has been further diminished as a shill, his selectively outspoken, insecure co-hosts, Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg tethered to a copy of the plan.
Thursday, I gave it a random try, tuned to the Kay Show prior to Cowboys-Giants, to hear if Kay and Bad Company’s guest had an ESPN attachment. Bingo! The guest was former Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck. Not a bad idea, until Kay, as a matter of business, revealed the reason for Tuck’s presence:
Tuck, too, is an ESPN show host. No ESPN, no Tuck. Bingo!
Then again, by now we know the score: It’s all a con. But don’t call Kay a shill!
Do advertisers truly believe that viewers will be driven to buy whatever Deion Sanders endorses when it might cause the opposite? Most, by now, wouldn’t trust Coach Slime with a blank envelope.
Still can’t figure why NFL players, weekly and too often forever lost to concussions, continue to toast their teammates by slapping them or head-butting them in the helmet.
If I were a color analyst, and given that many viewers also can’t figure that out, I’d at least bring it up.
Reader Joe Shepherd to Nike rep Rob Manfred: “Nothing says Red Sox like a Clarabell the Clown yellow and blue costume. And that’s what they are: Costumes, not uniforms.”
UNC paid James Madison 500 grand to womp them at home for “bowl eligibility” cred, then lost last week by a low-blood-pressure final, 70-50.
Where are all the go-green college students to protest when they have a tangible, provable and support-worthy issue?
Because money can move continents, California’s Stanford University is now a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. It’s current schedule include games, home or away, at Clemson, Syracuse, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. There’s also a game vs. Louisville, now an ACC “college.”
The expenditure of both money and transportation fuel to play football games is enormous. So is the silence from environment-sensitive student protestors. Oh, well.
Analysts not worth all that money
So, with Week 4 arrived, you think there’s anyone high up at Fox who regrets signing Tom Brady for $375 million. If he’s a draw — and he’d be the first in history as opposed to the game, but he’s no such thing — he’s for those who are attracted to pedestrian and insight-starved commentary.
Of course, few to no network sports production executives would know bad from worse.
CBS’ Tony Romo, who I still feel ain’t all that bad — he occasionally even makes me chuckle, and occasionally accurately sees and says what’s coming — is still paid an obscene $180 million, while CBS/Paramount is in the midst of massive layoffs.
Can’t wait to pick up Venus Williams’ new self-help book on personal integrity, credibility and health.
I’m sure there’s a chapter on Doug Adler, who suffered a heart attack, lost his career and reputation after he was preposterously accused of calling Williams “a gorilla” on ESPN.
Williams was given an opportunity to defend Adler, to correct the misconception, and she instead dismissed the issue as unimportant, which allowed an innocent human being to be destroyed by a lie.
Question of the week: ESPN sideline reporter Laura Rutledge after Monday’s Bills 47, Jags 10, asked Buffalo QB Josh Allen, “How would you describe the offensive performance tonight?”
How much better would Kirk Herbstreit be if he chose silence over empty cliches? Thursday night, during Cowboys-Giants, he killed space and time with “not on the same page,” “Need to dial up a play, here” and the need to “run down hill” junk-speak.
CBS’ lead college football duo of Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson are good enough and by now should be secure enough to call out players, many now NIL professionals, for counterproductive, all-about-me, post-play misconduct.
Again, modern sports media avoid offending the most offensive, thus choose to offend their audiences.
In under three hours Thursday, as seen on YES, the Yankees’ Austin Wells became Man of the Week. He took such a beating behind the plate a ref would have stopped the fight. And to think MLB players at 20 times Wells’ $750 grand per can’t be bothered to run to first.
