We’ve been together too long to cover this:
I harbor a desire to supply an NFL pregame show, one radically different from all of the others as it will be — get this — interesting, entertaining, thoughtful and leave viewers with something price knowing and to recollect.
I figure that many years of hours and tens of millions of dollars wasted could be easily cured.
Crazy, I do know.
I’d start by stuffing it with great things, the sort seen for a number of 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 as much as present something each 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 versus six guys talking about where the Bears rank against the run after Week 2, then threatening/warning us with, “We’ll be back on the half”?
How a few weekly special to discover and interview essentially the most modest, team-first, polite young gentleman on every team for future and rooting interests amongst civilized viewers who don’t have any major gambling interest in games?
Once the games begin, the network can revert to its focus, live and in replays, on those most desirous to degrade their sport with post-play immodesties for attention that now, for some sustaining mindlessness, TV guarantees.
And the top of each show would come with “The Most Ridiculous Celebration of the Week.” Sunday’s would highlight the Browns’ defense, last week against the Giants, gathering ultimately 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 very same defense.
And I’d close it with a graphic displaying the ultimate rating: The 0-2 Giants beat the favored Browns, 21-15, in Cleveland.
Hey, so many players now so desirous to embarrass their sport? Throw slightly back their way. What’s the worst that might come of it? Who knows, it could 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 which have turn out to be a 20-year requisite inside pregame shows, I’d give well-aimed cattle prods a shot. And who wouldn’t exit of their technique to watch that?
880 AM has turn out to be only 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.
In fact, 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 replica of the plan.
Thursday, I gave it a random try, tuned to the Kay Show prior to Cowboys-Giants, to listen to if Kay and Bad Company’s guest had an ESPN attachment. Bingo! The guest was former Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck. Not a foul idea, until Kay, as a matter of business, revealed the explanation for Tuck’s presence:
Tuck, too, is an ESPN show host. No ESPN, no Tuck. Bingo!
However, by now we all know the rating: It’s all a con. But don’t call Kay a shill!
Do advertisers truly consider that viewers might be driven to purchase whatever Deion Sanders endorses when it’d cause the other? Most, by now, wouldn’t trust Coach Slime with a blank envelope.
Still can’t figure why NFL players, weekly and too often perpetually lost to concussions, proceed to toast their teammates by slapping them or head-butting them within the helmet.
If I were a color analyst, and on condition that many viewers can also’t figure that out, I’d a minimum of 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’re: 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 of the go-green college students to protest once 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 each money and transportation fuel to play football games is big. So is the silence from environment-sensitive student protestors. Oh, well.
Analysts not price all that cash
So, with Week 4 arrived, you’re thinking that 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 primary in history versus the sport, but he’s no such thing — he’s for individuals who are drawn to pedestrian and insight-starved commentary.
In fact, 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 infrequently accurately sees and says what’s coming — continues to be paid an obscene $180 million, while CBS/Paramount is within the midst of massive layoffs.
Can’t wait to select up Venus Williams’ recent 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 profession and repute after he was preposterously accused of calling Williams “a gorilla” on ESPN.
Williams was given a chance to defend Adler, to correct the misperception, and she or he as an alternative dismissed the difficulty as unimportant, which allowed an innocent human being to be destroyed by a lie.
Query 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 a lot better would Kirk Herbstreit be if he selected silence over empty cliches? Thursday night, during Cowboys-Giants, he killed space and time with “not on the identical page,” “Must dial up a play, here” and the necessity to “run down hill” junk-speak.
CBS’ lead college football duo of Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson are ok and by now must 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 essentially the most offensive, thus decide 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.
