Monday Night Football

[Deborah]

Well, I see Dennis Miller is going to join Al Michaels and Dan Fouts in the booth for MNF. And I'm listening to this interview and the producer Don Ohlmeyer says he wants to provide "a telecast relevant to the hard-core football fans."

LOL! Does that mean that Dennis will say "fuck" on the air? Or wimp out? Should be interesting.

 

[Felix]

What? Was Vern Troyer not available?

I have to admit that I never took the Rush Limbaugh stuff too seriously, but this may be weirder yet. The train-wreck gene will make us watch -- and that's the point, I suppose. Win, lose, or draw, though, I just can't see it lasting -- Miller just doesn't have the attention span.

Don't forget that they also changed sideline "reporters," including trading Lesley Visser on Melissa Stark from ESPN.Stark seems capable enough, but I don't suppose that it's a coincidence that the only cute sportscaster at Disney got the job. I wonder if she'll have to walk around after every quarter holding up a card...

 

[Weird Harold]

Thank God for CBS Radio Sports

Just like the good old days with Howard Cosell!

TV Muted and a decent play-by-play and commentary coming from the radio speakers.

 

[ShynCarolina]

Guess ABC decided it had to try and do something to keep the people from switching to wrestling on cable. Read that the producer was actually very surprised by Dennis' knowledge of the game....but I'm kinda like Deborah in wondering if he sees a stupid play and asks "what the fuck was that moron thinking" and then goes into his rants (actually the part of the Dennis Miller show that I enjoy the most)

The one that actually has me scratching my head is Dan Fouts. Sure he knows the game and is a Hall of Famer but from what I remember of him in telecasts he was never an "over the top" type announcer. Wonder if he can even survive off the scraps left between Miller and Michaels ???

Read in an interview that Ohlmeyer actually wanted Kevin Costner as his ideal third man....Definitely think Dennis was a much better choice.

 

[Guest]

Sounds like sports broadcasts are going the way of TV news broadcasts, more entertainment less subject matter. Who is singing the Monday Night Football theme this year? The Backstreet Boys?

 

[Lasher]

From Monday's Edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Online

Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the chest-thumping, bookie-betting football purists and cerebral voids who wouldn't know Air Coryell from Air-U-Dite just don't get this Dennis Miller stroke of booth genius.

They still harbor the stuck-in-an-eight-track-player notion that the game's the thing on "Monday Night Football," where a scrawn by the name of Ally McBeal and a script by the name of Professional Wrestling have conspired to steal ratings from a franchise show that last season earned its lowest numbers ever. And I'm not just talking about the scores of ABC's lousy, if not drowsy, matchups.

Who better to parody the parity of the No Fun League than a former Funny Bone stand-up comedian, failed sports writer (he once made metaphorical fun of a City League football team scoring "about as often as Fred Rogers in a singles' bar") and longtime Steelers fan from Castle Shannon?

You ask me, it will all be worth it the first time he calls them the Jacksonville Jagoffs.

Sure, his hometown is one of the few places that will understand that little chip-chopped slice of humor. His acerbic, caustic wit requires that the listener own a modicum of intelligence, and we, being from Pittsburgh, are certainly born with that. But, same as elsewhere, some folks here don't get it. Don't want to get it.

Already, a few locals have begun poor-mouthing Miller. One dialed up ESPN Radio to claim in front of the sports-talk nation that the new "Monday Night Football" announcer had disowned his hometown. Word even reached the football field of alma mater Keystone Oaks High, where junior Steve McCormack was so jazzed about the booth change that he might turn off cable wrestling and turn on ABC to hear Miller's comic relief, although "I heard he already denied going to KO."

Just because a guy lives on the Left Coast and no longer plays the Funny Bone hardly means he's forgotten his roots. In truth, he often steals back into tahn to visit his sister and still helps out. The 1976 graduate in journalism and communications allowed his picture to grace a recent Point Park College catalogue. The former KDKA-TV "Pittsburgh 2Day" warm-up act and "Evening Magazine" contributor so welcomed Patrice King Brown's son to a taping of his HBO's "Dennis Miller Live" in Los Angeles, the show began with Guy Brown standing next to the host and telling cabledom, "Hi, Mom."

If any place should completely support Miller's new Monday gig, it's Pittsburgh. After all, this is the place where Bob Prince entertained as much as he informed us about Pirates baseball. This is the place where Myron Cope yodels about the Steelers still. We understand that sports broadcasts can be fun. Can be funny.

When was the last time we laughed at "Monday Night Football" -- I mean, laughed at something they meant as humorous?

The show got stale. Two-thirds of the three-man booth have been football dudes ever since Howard Cosell's departure after the 1983 season. The ratings, at 17.8 in 1994, drooped to an all-time low of 13.7 last fall. McBeal and Rock and Goldberg took a measure of both the audience and the buzz. In this age of cable saturation and short attention spans, "Monday Night Football" cannot arise to its once-lofty status, the same as the NFL cannot guarantee compelling matchups. So Don Ohlmeyer returned in March to produce the franchise he steered to glory in the 1970s, and he commenced to remodeling the store into an entertainment venue.

New director. New production staff. New look. New sound: Dan Fouts, the Hall of Fame quarterback from the San Diego Chargers and a six-year veteran of ABC's college-football telecasts, was hired to replace bland Boomer Esiason. Attractive Melissa Stark, 20 years younger than ousted Lesley Visser (a daring move by a network already sued for age discrimination by Donna DeVarona), and TV newbie Eric Dickerson were hired as sideline reporters.

The biggest gamble, though, was when Ohlmeyer hired the stand-up comedian.

CBS late-night host Craig Kilborn told The Washington Post: "I just can't wait till next fall, when Robin Williams replaces Ted Koppel."

"I'm not creating something just to have a buzz for a month and then to have four months of unendurable pain," Ohlmeyer said. No, he heard Miller become a frolicking football announcer and sit-down comedian on the test tape next to play-by-play man Al Michaels. He had the vision to imagine Fouts herding the broadcast back toward football after bouts of Michaels and Miller byplay.

During the conference call Thursday to announce this stunning change, Miller showed what he can bring to the broadcast: wide-ranging yuks. He joked about lame Fox football comedian Jimmy Kimmel, Oakland place kicker and Tallahassee police favorite Sebastian Janikowski (no, it wasn't a Polish joke), deep-tissue Shiatsu massage, a bathysphere and long-ago Bears running back Beattie Feathers.

Asked what tape served as the backdrop to his audition broadcast alongside Michaels: "The Zapruder film, which was interesting." Asked about his view on the death penalty: "Only for journalists." Asked about his broadcast style: "I want to bring a quasi-Dean Martin insouciance."

Well, his humor probably will go over many empty heads. You can just picture viewers, after one arcane comic reference, wondering if that Voltaire guy was a receiver who came from the Canadian Football League. Expect Miller to complete as many one-liners as, say, Fouts did passes: 60 percent. Still and all, he should add humor value -- even without the net of cable's profanity permissiveness.

"The reason I know he will be able to do that is, when you do stand-up you have to have that self-discipline," said Jimmy Krenn, a longtime friend and former warm-up act who toils mornings for WDVE-FM. "He had to carry the whole ball on stage; hewas the game. Now he can step back andflavor the game."

Plentiful football purists are spitting over this taste of something different. Polls following the announcement showed Americans 2-to-1 against Miller's hiring, with CNN/SI's online survey coming the closest to balanced: 30 percent voted it was a Terrible Idea, 28 percent Wait and See, 22 percent Great Idea and 20 percent At Least He's Not Rush Limbaugh. What did they all want, to go back to two boring football color commentators?

Americans spat about Cosell once, as well. For those too young to know or too old to recall, ABC was maligned for hiring a loudmouth ex-lawyer when it started these prime-time football games in 1970. All right, so Cosell owned a sports background: He knew boxing and baseball while reporting as a radio sportscaster. But he wasn't an NFL man, wasn't any more knowledgeable about the league than the next guy. In fact, he was the first network color commentator who, as he proudly put it, never played the game.

Nevertheless, Cosell became a lightning rod, a reason people tuned in and tuned out yet still talked about it in the decade and a half that "Monday Night Football" spent as a water-cooler event.

Advertisers and analysts and so-called experts can rail all they want about this Miller-dosed "Monday Night Football" never regaining its toehold on either the ratings or America. The point is, all Ohlmeyer wants to do is make the show compelling and entertaining again. Cut to its core, that's what sports is: entertainment, at the box office, in the arena itself, on television.

"This will work as a hip Howard Cosell," Krenn said. "As long as Dennis can be himself, he'll do wonderfully."

Mega dittoes, Jimmy. I agree. Can't wait till July 31, the Hall of Fame Game from Canton, and the rest of the fall.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.