WyBlog

Thursday Night Football

I watched last night's game between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys on NFL Network. This is the second season in which the NFL is trying to build market share for their fledgling network by showing 8 regular season games in prime time on Thursday and Saturday nights. They're hoping to capitalize on the popularity of Monday Night Football on ESPN, assuming that if people are used to watching a non-broadcast channel on Monday nights they'll also be amenable to watching one on Thursdays.

Monday Night Football was, and still is, the gold standard in broadcast football coverage. Some of the greatest football announcers in history ensured that it was always interesting, informative, and fun to watch. Howard Cosell set the bar high, John Madden and Al Michaels (now on NBC) provided keen insights and pithy commentary. The new ESPN Monday night crew continues that tradition; they're "football guys".

So why then does the NFL Network, the network for "football guys", put Bryant Gumbel in the booth? The man is atrocious. He gets the teams mixed up all the time - I counted at least 5 instances last night where he said the wrong team name when declaring who had the ball. He can't identify half of the players, stammering over names until Cris Collinsworth helps him out. Dallas had the ball on the Green Bay 25 and Gumbel said it was "first and ten from their own 25". He doesn't know the nuances of the rules, relying on Collinsworth to explain the rational behind determinations made by the referees.

If the NFL is serious about their network they should go out and get someone better qualified to do the play-by-play. Bryant Gumbel is out of his depth; he's Dennis Miller without the vocabulary, and like Miller, he needs to be replaced ASAP.

Posted at 10:19 by Chris Wysocki   [/jets]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |   |   Tweet