Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [328]
JOHN SKIPPER:
John Walsh wanted to extend journalism to everything we do, including event production. I mean, John—and this is not without controversy—still believes that within the event broadcast we should be doing journalism. We should be covering stories. I believe Jed Drake is the original guy who used the visual image of concentric circles to talk to the announcers. It’s not my favorite conceptual way to talk about it. It is fairly simplistic. There are a series of concentric circles and the game itself lies at the center of the circles. The circles outside are the things that aren’t actually happening in the action but which are closest to the action. You’re watching a game and it’s the first circle. The second circle is, let’s say, the star quarterback and his football life. The third circle is his personal life. The fourth circle, larger trends. It’s meant to show the game is the most important thing, and the more intense the game is, the less you go outside. But if you get to a game that’s 40–0 in the third quarter, you get further outside. And there is a place—I don’t know which circle it is; it’s not quite as well constructed as Dante’s inferno, but it’s almost as painful. There is one circle where you get outside the sport itself and that is where you begin to get into great controversy, where you bring a guest into the Monday Night Football booth where Tony is talking about the election. John [Walsh] loves to tweak convention and to tweak the gods, and there’s where you offend the sports guys, right?
MIKE TIRICO:
One of the places where I know Tony expressed to me that he felt uncomfortable, and I certainly understand it, was “Can you look at me and talk to me more during the game and engage me in conversation back and forth on things?” That’s really hard when you got ninety guys on the football field and you’re trying to identify who made the tackle, what’s the gain, what’s the down and distance, what’s the game situation, what’s the time-outs, challenge a play—the things that are the play-by-play person’s number-one priority. And to me, whether it was accurate or not, and varying people have their opinions on it, I maintained that the most important thing for me to do was “Who’s got the ball? What’s the down? What’s the distance? What’s the game situation?” All that above and beyond engaging Tony in conversation.
JOHN SKIPPER:
We wanted to put Kornheiser in the booth. We thought, with it moving over to ESPN, how cool would it be if we could re-create a little of the Howard Cosell magic? And I think we succeeded. We said, “Gee, we want the production to be really big. We don’t want there to be any sense as it moved from ABC to ESPN that the stature of it, the sort of number of cameras and elements, had declined a little. We don’t want it to feel like it’s lessened.”
Let me give credit to my bosses who let us experiment. We said this was what we wanted to do. We want to try something. By the way, I think it was a pretty interesting contemplation. Tony is so good. He’s so smart. Anybody who knows him at least understands what we hoped we would get on the air. To me the ideal booth would make every fan think that being the fourth guy sitting next to those three guys on the sofa is the best place to watch a football game. It’s fun. It’s insightful. It’s just relaxed. I said, “Please make it feel like you guys are having fun, you love the game, you’re cracking wise a little bit, you’re sharing a little bit of information, and the best place in the world to be would be in the next seat.” I shouldn’t say we don’t want people to take it seriously; we do. But personally, as a sports fan, I love sports. I do get emotionally involved, but I never lose the perspective that you’re just watching