This Will Fail Miserably

Life imitates TV imitating life

Monday Night Football is about to get knocked around. The new MNF team is just a bad idea. Mike Tirico is all business, a workman, a great broadcaster and deserves to have this gig. Joe Theismann has all the the humor of a shoelift and is so vain he'd consider changing his name to win a trophy. Tony Kornheiser has turned self-deprecating egotism into an artform, but has all the popular appeal of a Sizzler buffet. There are five reasons this is a bad idea for ESPN:

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We interrupt this rant to announce the inaugural Curly R Reader Contest. Mr. Tony has been a sportswriter for 25 years in Washington. Can you help us dig up the not-so-flattering things Mr. Tony has written about Joe Theismann? From his time as a preening shmo in the league to his over-important delivery from the booth, Joe has served himself up as a ripe target. Winning quotes will be posted to the front page. Post the quotes, with links, in comments, or email them to us by the start of the regular season. We'll post your quotes, with an intro from the Grand Prize Winner.
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1. It's not original
Dennis Miller was a football-but-not-that-footbally color guy. How did that work out? Paul Farhi's great piece in today's WashPost Style section mentions that Don Ohlmeyer, the guy responsible for Dennis Miller, gave Mr. Tony a tryout in 2000, so this is not even a new bad idea. If you will recall, Encyclopedia Britannica ran an Annotated Dennis Miller column every week, clarifying his haute semantique. So badly does the world want to forget Dennis Miller on MNF that Britannica has removed all traces of their Miller column. I could only find an Internet Archive of one column here.

2. It's insular
Before Mr. Tony was the third guy in the booth, he was the original King of All Media. He had his twice-weekly sports colums for years (remember the Bandwagon?), a weekly Sunday Style column, DC-area syndicated radio and TV shows, and finally, a syndicated ESPN radio show and PTI, still airing on ESPN. He's pretty much in the meaty part of the curve for ESPN fans with high disposable income, so hooray for the great idea ESPN had 5 years ago. You just managed to lure the viewers you already had.

3. It's the material
I don't think the bits will work as well on live TV as they do on the radio or in a controlled environment like PTI, where Mr. Tony gets to call all the shots, and where Wilbon overcommits on every segment. Theismann may be stiff, but he's serious as a compound fracture and won't let himself look stoopid to make a bit come off. They were running a 'Fortune Teller' bit tonight where fans get to email in questions, and he gave 'how should I know' answers to most of them, except for the trivia question on QBs posed directly to Mr. Tony by Warren Sapp, who pwn3d him. Memo to producers: Mr. Tony's cluelessness is contrived. Don't let the straight man have the last word.

4. ESPN is choking the pipe
By taking MNF to ESPN, Disney is automatically limiting the audience. ESPN may be the dominant cable property, but it's still accessible only by cable. At least two neighbors on my street will no longer have access to the games, and as far as the free-pay calculcation, it's better to have the free game on Monday instead of Sunday, after a whole day of free football over the air. Football fans get that short jones on Monday for one more game.

5. Dan Dierdorf forgives you already
Dan is a real football guy and waited 10 seasons for the desiccated Frank Gifford to wander off into the Viagra sunset to get that color job, only to get screwed by Boomer Esiason, who got tossed the next season. He says he'll never go back, but MNF's picture is still by his bed, and I bet he cries every time he has to hear the same goddamn old man Dick Enberg stories over and over. Make it right.

In fairness, Mr. Tony is just getting started, and I confess, I thought it was at first a bad idea when they brought Jonathan Winters on to Mork & Mindy. History has vindicated that decision, obviously, and I hold hope for the new Mearth.

Update, 10:35 am: The Big Lead has a good take on Mr. Tony, including a media/blogger roundup of reaction. Funny, but the NYT and LAT were effusive, while the WashPost, not so much.

George Constanza and Tony Kornheiser image: Binghamton Alumni Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4, Summer 2004 Online Edition