NFL

Tony Freakin’ Tony

We’re in round three of the NFL preseason, typically the time when starters stay in the game longer as coaches try to get in a dress rehearsal for the regular season opener, so it seems like a good time to give the new Monday Night Football crew on ESPN a quick critique. How much pain will we football fans have to endure this season? Turns out, maybe not that much.

Joe Theismann is back for another season of mindless analysis, and even though he is still an arrogant, self-centered ass, his ability to transmit laser beam-like searing pain through the television seems to have been nullified somewhat by the absence of Paul Maguire. More than anyone else in sports broadcasting, Maguire has reserved for himself a special place in the pantheon of half-witted color commentators, but who would have guessed he was the active ingredient that made Theismann so retch-inducing repulsive. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to reach through the TV screen and punch him in the mouth every time he launches into some long-winded soliloquy about zone blocking or the cover two defense, but Theismann has become almost tolerable without Maguire and the tedious Mike Patrick.

Speaking of that shitbag Patrick, ESPN chose to replace him with Mike Tirico on play-by-play. Some have called him smooth, but I say Tirico is downright aloof; it’s almost as if he’s offhandedly referring to action as part of a separate conversation. “Oh, say, there’s McNabb and he threw the ball. How about that.” I realize it’s only preseason but the guy needs to dial it up just a notch or two. Maybe in a heated game in December with playoff implications Tirico will muster up something resembling human emotion. One thing’s for sure, though, the production assistants at ESPN have to get him a roster sheet and maybe drill him on names before the broadcast. I’m not asking for a 100% error-free game, but the number of times he calls out the wrong number or the wrong name of the player involved in the action is aggravating to say the least.

Which brings us to the wild card of this bunch, Tony Kornheiser. ABC tried introducing a cynical voice to the MNF franchise back with Dennis Miller, an experiment that crashed and burned with a worse conflagration and loss of life than The Hindenburg, but there’s something different about Kornheiser’s shtick that just might work. I will say that I have enjoyed his badgering of Theismann in these first few broadcasts, questioning some of the insipid things that come out of that insipid mouth of his that I’d like to punch sometimes, and he does bring a sort of every-fan viewpoint to the booth. The question will be whether or not his act stands up over the course of 16 regular season broadcasts. Will we still in December be amused by his wry observations or greatly annoyed at how tiring he has become? Will Theismann take the heat like a man or bust Kornheiser in the chops? It could be entertaining.

One thing, though, that will not get more entertaining over time is the inclusion of the “Ask Tony” segment of the broadcast, where Tirico reads out viewer questions that have been e-mailed to Kornheiser through the ESPN web site. The whole segment is a little annoying right now as it breaks up the flow of the game, but I guarendamntee you that we’ll all be rising up with pitchforks and torches in mob rule fashion if they don’t stop playing the theme song that chants to a backbeat, “Tony! Tony! Tony!” Key-righst that is going to get old fast.

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