If not, tough, ’cause it’s time for our first NBC panel: “Sunday Night Football.”
This year brings Keith Olbermann to NBC’s football team, which seems almost designed to spark controversy. Maybe not Dennis-Miller-sized controversy, but, still, controversy nonetheless. Olbermann himself, however, thinks people might just be getting excited over nothing. “The deal is if I say something negative about Reggie Bush, I have to come back and say something negative about Clinton Portis,” he joked. “Other than that, there will be no scripting of this whatsoever. Obviously, you people have asked about this. I think controversy applies to sports. I don’t think it’s going to keep people outside of that. But it’s not going to be unfamiliar to people who have seen me doing sports before.”
* John Madden isn’t thrilled about the off-field antics by NFL players that get all the press, but he does, at least, think the League is doing a halfway decent job of trying to keep things better under control. “I think Roger Goodell is doing a great job on that,” acknowledges Madden. “And, you know, it’s a small percentage, and I’ve talked to the commissioner about this because that bothers me too. In fact, we were just talking earlier about…remember that USA Today picture on the front page that had all the guys that had been arrested? Boy, that hit right in the gut. I thought, you know, that’s not what the NFL is all about. That’s not what pro football is all about. That maybe one percent. And I think that we have to do something to get the other 99 percent out there, and I’m not saying to shove anything under the rug. I mean, take care of ’em, get ’em out, weed ’em out, do whatever you have to. But by God, it’s only one percent, and I think the commissioner agrees with that.”
* Collinsworth’s take on the matter: “Is it part of our job to continue to expose people, to hit on the ‘Pacman’ Joneses of this league? Yes. Are we going to do that? You’re absolutely right. But I really appreciate, and I’ve always appreciated, John’s trying to give a fair and balanced look at the league, you know. I mean John Madden, over the years, has made characters out of people, the Nate Newtons of the world and the guys that have exposed the fun side and what great personalities we have in this league, because you do have a mixture and a melting pot of people from all backgrounds, from all neighborhoods, from all ethnic origins that makes this league so unique.”
* Jerome Bettis might’ve sounded good-humored when he spoke of the trial by fire he went through in the process of transitioning from player to commentator, and what he might have to offer to this year’s new player-to-commentator, Tiki Barber, but it also sounded like Cris Collinsworth is gonna get a beatin’ one of these days. “Last year, Mr. Ebersol’s piece of advice to me was to stay close to Mr. Collinsworth and to kind of listen to what he tells you, and as I’ve come to understand after one year, that was bad advice. And ever since that — when I was here a year ago, the city of Pittsburgh loved me. And we were talking to some of the affiliates this week last year, and I told Cris I didn’t think Coach Cowher was going to be in Pittsburgh next year. He said, ‘Oh, you think that? Oh, you need to run with that.’ So my first pre-season game, I come out and I say, ‘Coach Cowher is leaving Pittsburgh,’ and a firestorm ensued. I go back to Pittsburgh and just — a cabdriver is driving by and stops… ‘Bettis, you suck!’ And I’m saying to myself, ‘Where did all this come from?” Well, it goes even further. I got through that part, and then we go to Cincinnati for pre-season game, and, you know, he’s loved in Cincinnati and they don’t like me too much in Cincinnati. So we’re doing the show in the stadium, and Cris kind of leans over to me and says, ‘Hey, show them the ring.’ So I reach up and I show them the ring, and about five minutes later, about 10 security members had to escort me out of the stadium because of Cris’ advice. So my advice to Tiki is to be careful of the information that you get.”
* Tiki Barber, you may not be surprised to learn, is headstrong and unconcerned about making his own transition. “I’m aware of what comments mean from both sides,” he says, confidently, “by the journalist side and as a subject side. I’ve always been one to speak my mind especially as I became more confident in myself and sure of what I wanted to accomplish when I spoke. That’s what I’m going to do on ‘Football Night in America.’ It’s what I’m intending to do with the ‘Today’ show. Covering different types of stories, I’m able to express my opinion, and that’s what Dick hired me for, to express an opinion, not to give the standard answer, the boring response that makes the fans of the certain city feel good about their team. It’s more important for me to tell the truth and sometimes you get heat for the truth. And when I was a player, my mantra was, if you don’t want to hear the truth, then don’t ask me the question, because I’m going to tell you what is really going on.”
In closing, the guys were thrown a grenade by one of my colleagues, who asked about the lack of an NFL franchise in Los Angeles and whether we’d likely see one again anytime soon. Here were some of their respective comments:
“If they had a stadium, they’d have a team. It’s real simple. This is all about a stadium. In fact, if Los Angeles had a stadium, I think they’d have two teams. And this is a market of 14, 15 million people, Southern California. California will have 60 million people by 2050, the most recent survey. This is a giant area, and it’s such garbage when I read it’s said by people, ‘Oh, Southern Californians are too laid back. They have too many things do.’ That is complete nonsense. I was here when the Rams played here at the Coliseum. They were drawing 100,000 people. This was, like, 45 years ago. It’s all about a stadium, and it’s up and down this entire state. San Diego has a problem. They can’t get a stadium built. Los Angeles has no viable football stadium. And San Francisco has the same problem, as does Oakland. It’s all about if you can build it — and Philip Anschutz actually tried to build a football stadium, wanted to, downtown — he built Staples Center — years ago. And he said, ‘Listen, if I’m going to get some — any garbage from, in effect, the city government at that point, I’m backing away.’ He called their bluff. Here they came, as they always did, to try to get the Coliseum to be the site. The NFL has made it pretty clear the Coliseum is not going to be the site. They don’t want to put a team there. They don’t want to put a team in a refurbished Coliseum. It has to be someplace else. They have a stadium here, they’ll have a team, maybe two, and a Super Bowl every three years. Until then, forget about it.” – Al Michaels
“From the league standpoint — and this is true in any sport — if you grant a franchise, either an expansion franchise or a team that’s going to move from its present location, if you grant it without either a new stadium or arena having already been built or an ironclad agreement that it will shortly be built, you lose the leverage. ‘Here, you can have it. Play in the Coliseum.’ Where’s the leverage, then, to get the community to chip in? Whether or not communities should chip in is a separate political question, but that’s the way it’s always worked for the league.” – Bob Costas
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the luxury box revenues and the personal seat licenses and all that stays with the home team. So unless you have really state-of-the-art luxury boxes and all of that, where everything else is shared revenue between the teams and sort of a — I don’t want to say socialistic, but a little bit of that — system where they share the revenues. But those luxury boxes and those premium seats all stay with the home team. And that’s the reason you still see the disparity among the revenue of the various teams. You know, L.A. is the only market that really hasn’t folded when they lost a team. Cleveland said, “We’re not building a stadium.” The team goes away; they build a stadium. You’ve got Houston; did the exact same thing. You’ve got Baltimore; did the exact same thing. They’re not building a stadium; the team leaves; they build a brand-new stadium. L.A. has been the only team that’s said, ‘See ya.'” – Cris Collinsworth
“There was an NFL team in 1926 that moved out and an AFL team in 1926 that folded. There was an AFL team, I think, in 1940, the original American Football League. There were the L.A. Dons, the All-America Conference. That went out of business. The Rams, of course, came here and then, obviously, moved out. The Chargers started here and moved out. The Raiders moved here and moved out. The L.A. Express, we know what happened to them.” – Keith Olbermann
Best comment from anyone on the team…? “The L.A. market sucks,” said by none other than this man:
He was, of course, kidding, adding, with a grin and a shaking fist, “If any of you bastards quotes me out of context…!”
But, hey, suddenly, Keith Olbermann wasn’t the most controversal guy on the panel. Who would’ve seen that coming?
