Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [309]
JED DRAKE:
Freddie left here to do Monday Night Football, and Jay had been here doing Sunday Night Football. So Jay was on staff and deserving of the position and was given it. It’s that simple.
Freddie is a great football producer. And by that I mean that he produces the game very, very well. Where we like to take our productions is to not just limit it to the game, but to bring in, when appropriate—and that’s the key thing, that’s the art of producing, when appropriate—other elements that may be germane to that game, that telecast, ultimately, to the viewers. We might think that the story needs a discussion point—whereas Freddie is going to stick to the game, the game, and nothing but the game. Which is okay. That’s fine. It’s a different presentation. And you can absolutely be certain that that view is the view of Al Michaels and then John Madden, and Freddie and Drew. Tony Kornheiser was the biggest personification of the very difference in philosophy that I just suggested.
FRED GAUDELLI:
At the end of the day, if I’d gotten the Monday night job, we would have been in constant conflict. Because in my opinion—having done football for twenty years—that’s not the way you set up an NFL telecast. To call it a platform for something larger is just wrong. That’s looking at it from the wrong perspective. You just paid all this money for this product. You can do things around it and use it to make your network better, as Dick has done with Sunday night. But you don’t stop producing around the game. That just shows your inexperience and lets people know you don’t know what you’re doing.
Think about if ESPN goes the other way, okay? If it’s Al and John and Drew and me on Monday Night Football. Number one, they’d probably get better games because the league’s going to want to give Madden better games, and they don’t have to go through three years of fighting off the critics about all the shit in the booth. That show has been in total flux from the beginning because they didn’t make the easy decision, and they made a bunch of wrong ones. The announcers—Tirico, Jaworski, Kornheiser are terrible; they’re terrible. They’re nowhere near Nantz and Simms, or fuckin’ Aikman, let alone Michaels and Madden.
TONY KORNHEISER:
Fred Gaudelli has gone out of his way to say mean things about me. We met once in our life for ten seconds in Tampa or Orlando before the whole thing started. He is quoted saying that I’m a “rinky-dink bullshit guy,” and that I’ve ruined the telecast. He got a better job. Why’s he attacking me? I’m fine with Jay. I have problems with Jay because Jay is sort of like a Dalmatian in the firehouse, when the bell rings, it doesn’t matter what’s said, it’s going to be this particular way, but we talk, and I love him.
FRED GAUDELLI:
We had this great synergy amongst the four of us. Each of us knew what the other was thinking, when they were thinking, and what the other required. It just made for enjoyable and productive work. And that meant that we could function at a really high level. I remember when John joined the show, people said to me, “Oh, my God, you’re going to get Al and John, it’s going to be a nightmare.” Nightmare? It was the easiest time I ever had. I had the two best guys who had ever done it, and all they cared about was getting it right.
DICK EBERSOL:
Freddie was the producer from ’01 to ’05 for the last years ABC had Monday nights, and Drew was the director. They were both available to me for reasons I will never understand. Those two guys were born at ESPN, rose all the way through the ranks, then they were told, in front of the entire industry, that they didn’t get the job producing this billion-point-one property because the other guys were the loyal guys who had stayed with ESPN. But you fucking made the decision to take them from ESPN to ABC!
Now, I thank you immensely, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Freddie and Drew are the two best hires I’ve ever had in my