You can't say things deteriorated this season because this has been an ongoing problem for more than 20 years, ever since the Cosell-Meredith-Gifford team peaked and John Madden exploded onto the scene, followed by the networks' collectively deciding, "instead of accepting that these were two once-in-a-lifetime situations that cannot be recreated, we're going to kill ourselves trying to recreate them."
Simmons posits in the first paragraph that the main problem is that the networks have been unsuccessfully trying to rip off Cosell-Meredith-Gifford and Madden, two beloved broadcasting entities. Fine, it's an opinion. But then, later in the same column, he throws this out there:
And that's the biggest problem with football announcing right now (well, one of the biggest): Nobody is trying to rip off the guys who everyone loved the most.
What? What happened to the argument you led off this piece with? People didn't love Howard Cosell and John Madden?
Fledgling broadcasters everywhere, please, you have our permission -- rip off Summerall and Albert. I'll settle for three poor man's Marvs and Pats and maybe even a couple of homeless man's Marvs and Pats.
Huh? Seriously, I'm just confused. Unless he's saying that these are the only two guys it's okay to hire lukewarm copies of.
Let's just forget this column happened.
Labels: bill simmons, football
