HBO MAX has a new documentary: “Miller Night Football.” It’s about Dennis Miller’s two years (2000-01) as color analyst on “Monday Night Football.”
Aside from Howard Cosell’s reign of terror (1970-83) during MNF’s glory days, Miller’s tenure was the franchise’s high point.
If you’re smart and creative, that is.
Therein lied the problem.
Miller, a Pittsburgh native and ex-commissioner of the air-hockey league at Point Park University, is a football fan.
Not a football lifer.
An incredibly witty and erudite comedian who hosted the “Weekend Update” news segment on “Saturday Night Live.” Also “Dennis Miller Live” on HBO.
His addition to MNF’s booth was a curveball designed to shock the system, and it worked.
Miller was insightful in a way ex-jocks could never verbalize. If his football expertise wasn’t great, it was good enough. His references and analogies were gold.
To wit: “The ref is whipping out that flag like it’s the only lighter at a crack house.”
Al Michaels, Dan Fouts and Miller were the MNF booth I wanted.
Michaels is the gold standard on play-by-play.
When it comes to bleating former players, Fouts was better than most.
The three of them worked together. The whole was greater than the sum of the parts.
It was never meant to last, and it didn’t.
John Madden left FOX to come to ABC and join MNF, replacing both Fouts and Miller alongside Michaels.
I saw Madden as more bloviating clown than legend. Give me an articulate comedian over a babbling football lifer.
But Madden was far superior to the parade of ex-jocks currently cluttering the sports airwaves, and not just the broadcast booths.
I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but these days sports networks specialize in selling stupid to the stupid, the dumber the better, and it gets dumber every day.
No point listing the guilty, because they already get too much oxygen. But the more stupid, the more successful.
Because that’s where America is at. The war against intellectualism goes worryingly beyond sports media.
MNF isn’t special anymore.
Too many football games on TV.
MNF used to be the NFL’s weekly crown jewel, the only place you could see the previous day’s highlights.
Now it’s just another telecast.
Highbrow columnist Tony Kornheiser was a second attempt to put something different in MNF’s booth from 2006-08. I liked it, but Kornheiser had to deal with on-mic opposition, namely Mike Tirico on play-by-play no-selling Kornheiser’s wit and freezing him out. Miller had no such problem.
“Pardon the Interruption,” the show hosted by Kornheiser and the equally intelligent Michael Wilbon, is the best program on ESPN and all of sports TV. But it’s spawned too many idiot illegitimate kids.
As Wilbon recently lamented, ESPN doesn’t promote PTI: “You’ll never hear a mention of this show.”
That’s because it’s not dumb for dummies.
I loved Miller on MNF.
But then, I’m a sports guy whose biggest inspiration as a kid was “National Lampoon” magazine.
MNF has alternate versions now.
But the Manning brothers alt-cast isn’t funny.
The Pat McAfee alt-cast won’t be funny.
No matter. Those guys laugh uproariously at their own jokes. The dolts watching laugh at the laugh.
Miller was funny.
Still is.
I’d love to see Miller make an NFL comeback.
Meantime, today’s football broadcasts have more holes in them than Ronnie Milsap and Jose Feliciano after a game of lawn darts.
Source: triblive.com
