Of NBC’s plans to reunite Dan Patrick with Keith Olbermann on “Football Night In America”, Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock warns, “The Big Show era is dead. ESPN killed it,” slagging FNIA as “already hamstrung by an overcrowded set featuring talking heads with limited insight about, connection to and passion for the NFL.”
Olbermann, a brilliant broadcaster, is a left-wing political pundit. You don’t think football when you see Olbermann. You think Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann’s work on Football Night comes off like he spends an hour each week thinking about the NFL. His disjointed and confusing commentary last season about Michael Vick exposed how out of place he is talking football on a big stage.
Dan Patrick, a brilliant broadcaster, won’t help. He’s a clever radio host, but he’s not a football guy. Patrick will be one more person on the show who has little real interest in the game
I’m sure all these guys are football fans. Hell, they probably operate great fantasy teams. But they’ll all contribute to one big, sloppy mess on Sunday nights. In terms of relevance and chemistry, the NBC show will lose more ground to Terry, Howie, Jimmy and Curt Menefee.
I’m not pimping Fox’s studio show because I work for FOXSports.com. I don’t roll like that. Just about everyone in the industry agrees that Fox’s studio show is the best in football. The reason it’s the best is because the main guys are all still football men first. They still love the game and follow it with tremendous passion. Or at least that’s how they appear on Sunday afternoons. They act like they’d rather watch football on Sundays than grill George W. Bush about his Iraq policy.
I’m not quite sure how NBC’s prime time studio show — conducted after all of Sunday afternoon’s games have finished, can possibly “lose ground” to Fox’s program, particularly as the latter’s real strength (and this is a massive stretch) is in their pre-1pm prognostications rather than postgame review. But full credit to Whitlock for playing the part of the company man to the hilt. Regardless of what “everyone in the industry” might think, and Non-Metallic K.O.’s political allegiances aside, the only thing tougher than listening to Terry Bradshaw narrate the day’s highlights (and I’m including Chris Berman’s Sunday evening summations in this claim) would be “The Diary Of Anne Frank” on cassette, as read aloud by Fran Healy.
Jesus, Bill O’Reilly? Until Keith releases a book as embarrassing as “Culture Warrior” or “Those Who Trespass”, Big Sexy should at least have enough manners to compare Keith to someone like Brit Hume.
Really, though, FNIA does suck.
Dave: I don’t think he was comparing him to O’Reilly so much as commenting on Olbermann’s obsession with O’Reilly and constant attacks on him. I appreciate that Olbermann is out there attack dogging for the Left, but I avoid him all the same. I’d prefer a George Will hosted “This Week In Baseball” to any more KO exposure.
One thing I do like about Olbermann — as a sports reporter, he avoided going into locker rooms or traveling with teams, as he thought it would interfere with his objectivity. That came out in the recent NYR profile of him, in the midst of all the “real journalists” who claim bloggers aren’t journalists because we don’t have “access.”
Surely a reading by Fran Drescher would be tougher still.
God Save The Fran.
(sorry)
except for the fact that you misspelled fran healy’s name, that last paragraph is so on target it just shot marvin in the face…
The Fran Healy line is pretty much the best thing that’s been published on this site. “God Save The Fran” is probably the worst. So, yeah, let’s call it even.