12/21/24
February 27, 2002
What a Relief.: The NFL Today on CBS replaces Glanville and Ditka with Esiason and Marino. (Ditka will remain with NFL Today but have a reduced role.) That studio team was absolutely painful to watch. No chemistry. Forced outrageousness. And Britney Spear microphones. (It's the same feeling I get when I watch the NBA on NBC.)
Why in Baby Jesus's name was Randy Cross ever allowed to be part of that group? It was like watching a lump of putty with a mullet. Good riddance, him, to the game booth. And yes, Ditka is Ditka (I was 9 years old and living in Chicago in 1985 and this is minor blaspheme) but he's just not that interesting on TV. Glanville could have been good with a real antagonist on the set. This sounds like minor surgery on a show that really needs a more major overhaul.
posted by thebigpoop at 06:25 PM on February 27, 2002
replace 'show' with 'entire network' and we've got a deal. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and wait for owillis to whine about Marino being overrated. :) [I've only caught him once on HBO, but he was surprisingly good for someone who had a reputation for being standoffish and aloof in Miami.]
posted by tieguy at 07:11 PM on February 27, 2002
CBS has a football show? I hadn't noticed. They have football games too? A-F-C you say? Might as well be speaking Klingon. Oh wait, their the ones with Pr-ahm-T-ahm. Ick. Now, how about JB, Howie, Chris and Terry? :)
posted by owillis at 09:54 PM on February 27, 2002
owillis: howie, chris, terry. raiders, bengals, steelers. a f c. just one in a long line of reasons i refuse to watch the pregame.
posted by lescour at 10:01 PM on February 27, 2002
Oh, I watch pregame. On ESPN. It continually astounds me how bad the network pre-game shows are. P.S. owillis: it is spelled A.F.C. and pronounced 'Super Bowl champion AFC' :)
posted by tieguy at 12:19 AM on February 28, 2002
Marino is good on "Inside the NFL", and I liked Boomer on MNF a few years back. I think this could be good, get a couple old QBs on the team. Oh, and the AFC is the better conference...back to back SB Champs (also four of the last five) and counting.
posted by bcb2k2 at 07:20 AM on February 28, 2002
Never mind that 14-something year drought for the AFC in the Superbowl. He-he... but seriously - one upside to the new schedule will be seeing more AFC teams. Every time the 'Skins have a game on CBS the whole bar is sort of "Ugh. Different. Strange. Gumbel? Everything messed up here."
posted by owillis at 12:34 PM on February 28, 2002
I'm not sure that Boomer and Marino are really great choices for replacemnts in any situation. Boomer is a master of the obvious statement and Marino is board stiff. At least Ditka, though I rarely caught CBS's pregame, looked like he was gonna pop any second. Not that any of this matters, I mean, c'mon, its the CBS pregame show.
posted by eyeballkid at 09:31 PM on February 28, 2002
Now this is something I would give God thanks for, because watching NFL Today was really hell. Jim Nantz tried to maintain something resembling a professional demeaner, but it was truly painful when Glanville and Ditka would just start shouting, with Randy Cross trying to make any kind of intelligent sense of what those two were screamin' about.