The Friars won’t baby Boomer
RETIRED JETS QUARTERBACK Boomer Esiason is no stranger to getting sacked, but the lineup of heavy hitters he’ll face at a Jan. 30 Friars Club Roast will be unlike anything he’s seen. The offensive lines he’ll encounter a week from today will be nothing like those that guarded him in a 14-year gridiron career.
“I don’t know what I got myself into,” Esiason tells Confidenti@l. “It sounded like a good idea six months ago.”
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” big man Jeff Garlin leads a lineup of wisecrackers, including Esiason’s WFAN radio colleague Craig Carton, Larry King, Lewis
Black, Jeff Ross, Jay Mohr and Robert Wuhl, who’ll be out to lower the boom on Boomer (r.).
“After all the slings and arrows that have been thrown at me as a football player and a radio broadcaster, I guess I can take it for a couple of hours,” he says.
The 6-foot-5 NFL vet, a native of West Islip, L.I., knows critics won’t lack for material. “I lost the Super Bowl, I had a losing record as a quarterback, I got fired from ‘Monday Night Football’ and was replaced by Dennis Miller,” he laughs. “Believe me, there’s enough stuff out there for people to take shots with.”
Roasters also might make fun of Esiason’s bold prediction last week that the New England Patriots would meet the Seattle Seahawks at MetLife Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday. The Patriots were knocked off last weekend by the Denver Broncos.
No doubt the roast will be fullcontact, but Esiason says that it’s good few of his former teammates will be involved.
“What’s seen, heard, said and written in a locker room stays in the locker room,” he says. When roastmaster Garlin quarterbacks next Thursday’s big event, he says he’ll be calling audibles.
“I’m an improvisational comedian, so I’ll be making it up right there,” says Garlin, a Chicago Bears fan who declares there’s no such thing as unsportsmanlike conduct at a Friars roast.
“If it’s funny, there’s nothing off-limits,” Garlin says. “Some people think being shocking is all you have to do, and they’re stupid. And they’re not funny.”
No matter what happens at the roast, the 52-year-old Esiason says it’ll be better than returning to the NFL.
“The last thing I want to do is go back and get the crap kicked out of me — physically, anyway,” he said.