After a year of suffering, I’m looking forward to Monday Night Football again. There’s a crazed fan in the broadcast booth!
I don’t know if comedian Dennis Miller will fly or flop, but I’m betting he’ll do well — among the people who understand him. He prides himself on cerebral commentary, and some of his references are a bit obscure. (Such as the already famous line, when he said former St. Louis Rams coach Dick Vermeil seems to “cry more frequently than Sylvia Plath being pepper-sprayed.” Plath was a poet who committed suicide.)
Granted, I’m already a fan. The guy’s rants on HBO are hilarious, some of the best social satire going. To bring that zinging wit to an NFL game is a brilliant move. It will be like watching the game with Miller. Who wouldn’t want to do that?
After a series of wrong moves, perhaps the brain trust at MNF is onto something. Last season — when MNF unloaded color commentator Dan Dierdorf and went to a two-man booth — was a disaster. It might’ve worked, if one of the men was not Boomer Esiason, a man so prone to utter the obvious it was almost painful. (Team faces long second down play, and here’s Boomer: “What you’re looking for here is something positive to happen.” I guess that’s unlike all the other plays, when the offense prays for the negative.)
Boomer, a former NFL quarterback and a nice guy, just is not an entertainer. I’d have friends over to watch the game some weeks, and the banter in my living room bested Boomer. Besides watching the game, we’d wait for another boring Boomerism. He could turn an overtime game into a root canal.
When producer Don Ohlmeyer tabbed Miller to join the team of Al Michaels and Dan Fouts, people were stunned, but only because it shook up the status quo. We’d become so used to seeing ex-jocks as broadcasters we couldn’t believe the job went to a slightly built, shaggy-haired comedian who has that “I’ve been up all night” look no matter what he’s wearing. But why should MNF be the exclusive province of former football players who, generally speaking, are about as articulate as former football players? Of the millions of viewers each week, most have never played football. So they don’t know the intricacies of blocking a trap play. Who cares? You don’t have to play the game to be a fan — or to talk about it.
Howard Cosell never played either, yet he remains the standard by which all other MNF analysts are judged. No one could be Cosell, and no one should try. That is not to say someone else’s style can’t be as good as Cosell’s, or even better. There are 6 billion people on the planet. Someone can do it.
Perhaps it’s Miller. He’ll at least give the broadcast a fun injection. Fouts, a better choice than Boomer for the former-player role, has been a top broadcaster for a while. So we’ll still get the perspective of what it’s like on the field. Michaels should be the play-by-play guy as long as he can open his mouth. He’s among the best ever.
In watching the preseason games, though, I’ve also been impressed with Miller’s knowledge of the game. This is not just a trip to the funhouse, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. An unabashed longtime NFL fan, Miller grew up in Pittsburgh watching the Steelers during the dynasty years, so he’s not some guy from Mississippi trying to cover a cricket match for ESPN.
He also isn’t taking it too seriously, as he said during his first broadcast: “Hey, it’s not religion. Then again, the pope never had to go across the middle against Ronnie Lott.”
Funny stuff.
No doubt some of Miller’s one-liners will miss. The line between wit and contrivance is easy to stumble over, and Miller sometimes spouts off like a vocab improvement instructor who got crazy with the caffeine. His challenge is to leave people holding their sides instead of reaching for a dictionary.
Not to worry. Miller doesn’t have to keep us roaring the entire game. The game is still the main thing. The broadcast team is there to liven it up, offer a few insights, give us a few laughs.
But this is also prime-time television. As the producers learned last year, the game is not enough. They took a chance with Miller. I’ve seen enough of him to want to see more. From Monday Night Football’s corner, that’s as good as it gets.
David Meeks can be reached at or 954-356-4726.
