ONE BUMPY NIGHT
Despite Eagles’ win, Collinsworth likely has few fans in Philly
Midway through last week’s NBC Sports conference call, Cris Collinsworth was asked why he hates the Philadelphia Eagles so much. Al Michaels chuckled in response.
“Universal animus … no matter where we go,” Michaels said, referring to the emotion directed toward Collinsworth based on the presumption he hates everybody’s favorite team above all others.
That perception, based on Sunday night’s Twitter traffic, will endure and likely increase in the wake of Collinsworth’s questioning of two Eagles touchdowns during the NBC telecast of Philadelphia’s win over the Patriots.
Collinsworth, alas, sets himself up for such abuse. His tone of voice lends itself perfectly to righteous indignation and possesses the perfect pitch to sometimes entertain and sometimes infuriate.
The fact he questioned the validity of Zach Ertz’s go-ahead touchdown, after earlier questioning the validity of Corey Clement’s third-quarter score, will only cement the ire that Philly fans — and it appears, some unaffiliated fans as well — feel toward him.
Collinsworth said on the conference call that the question of why he hates this team or that team is the most frequent one he gets on his travels.
“I really, honestly, expect my next question to be, why do I hate the Patriots so much?” he said. “So I’m just going to hang on and go along for the ride.”
It was a bumpy one as Collinsworth and Michaels tried to second-guess what the call would be on the two TD plays. NBC, unlike Fox, does not employ a former referee or NFL official as a rules consultant, so it’s the announcers trying to guess along with the officials.
When that happens, somebody is always going to feel the announcers are rooting against them. The funny thing is, Patriots fans probably think he hates New England, too.
The most fitting epitaph of Sunday’s telecast, and of the NFL season when people struggled to determine when a catch was a catch, came after another scoring play when he said, “Can any of us survive the ground?”
The long, long pregame
Sunday’s 17½ hours of pregame programming began, appropriately, with a sermonette, delivered by NFL Network analyst Kurt Warner. Warner’s thesis is that PatriotsEagles was a struggle of biblical proportions, with New England quarterback Tom Brady as Goliath and Philadelphia’s Nick Foles as David.
“We’ve got the giant in Tom Brady on one side and we’ve got the shepherd boy in Nick Foles on the other side,” Warner said.
In an extra layer of biblical epistemology, Warner declared that Brady began as David but became Goliath by slaying the previous Goliath, as in Warner and the St. Louis Rams, in Super Bowl XXXVI. Got that?
NFL Network’s best features included Andrea Kremer’s conversation with Brady’s parents, memories of Prince’s Super Bowl XLI halftime show in the rain in Miami and local pieces on Vikings fan Danny Lilya, who was born with a spinal injury but is the special-teams holder for his high school team, and on an elderly fan of a high school team coached by the son of longtime Vikings coach Bud Grant.
ESPN also went with the traditional two-set approach, anchored by Suzy Kolber and, in her Super Bowl hosting debut, Samantha Ponder. Highlights from ESPN were a salute to veteran NFL Films cameramen Donnie Marx, who originated the slow motion “tight on the spiral” technique for long passes, and Hank McElwee, and a profile of Patriots superfan Alyssa Silva, whose devotion to the Patriots, and theirs to her, is inspiration amid lifelong medical difficulties.
O’Brien’s key bit
Texans coach Bill O’Brien was a key voice in a story on the evolution of the Patriots’ slot receiver position from Deion Branch through Troy Brown, Wes Welker, Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola.
NBC went for a faster-paced show that was heavier on entertainment elements, many of them actually entertaining. I didn’t put the stopwatch to them, but I would be surprised if most of the major elements weren’t under three minutes, which is probably a good move on a day when people are watching in groups and attention spans are divided.
Michele Tafoya’s interview of Bud Grant included a remarkable moment when the Great Stone Face showed emotion at his memories of lost World War II comrades and his love of the national anthem, and a moment of humor when, asked how he responded to those who noted his four Super Bowl losses, he held up his Hall of Fame ring. Other highlights: Snow golf at Hazeltine National Golf Club, Von Miller trying to carry on a conversation while eating hot wings and the enduring friendship of Joe Gibbs and Doug Williams.