MNF more SMH than LOL
Oh god, Monday Night Football. This statement works in general, since new play-by-play man Joe Tessitore treats every play like WHOA BIG PLAY, HERE WE GO, DID YOU SEE THAT BRO and new colour analyst Jason Witten is a bland and fumbling doof, and Booger McFarland’s yelling from the sideline mostly feels like a rehearsal for a Saturday Night Live skit playing out in the actual world.
There’s a lot of that going on in a lot of places these days. It’s not enjoyable, to be honest.
The problem here is ESPN went with an announcer who got big calling frenzied college football upsets, a recent Dallas Cowboy who wasn’t Tony Romo, and a sidekick, and stuck them on games that aren’t really big games. What used to be The Big National Game is now just The Last Game Of The Week, With Limited Fantasy Football And/Or Gambling Implications.
So having Joe Tessitore act like the game is A BIG ONE AND LET’S GET EXCITED FOR A 14-YARD COMPLETION EARLY IN THE SECOND QUARTER, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT — as opposed to, say, Al Michaels, who casually eases through the game with some appropriate spikes, only getting excited for the really good stuff, and slides in gambling references like a slightly sketchy but beloved uncle — makes it feel like he’s doing pro wrestling.
Witten in particular is like if you tried to make the platonic ideal of the Former Dallas Cowboy Turned Announcer in some kind of broadcasting video game that lacked actual features to apply to him. He’s fine-looking, not very interesting, blames the left for introducing player safety to football, and eats up the idea of the Cowboys giving up a first-round pick to the Jon Gruden-run Raiders for a wide receiver who probably isn’t turning their season around. All we need him to do is some ads for some local car dealerships he owns in the Arlington area and we’re set.
It’s bad every week. They don’t criticize Eli Manning even as he sucks the life out of the Giants. Witten doesn’t realize that the Falcons kicker isn’t technically a rookie despite having played in a game against him. Booger mocks Odell Beckham for not peeing on the sideline. Bros, talkin’ about football. It just feels like they’re trying too hard, even if Monday Night Football has been doing that for years.
So, why them? Bryan Curtis of The Ringer did a profile of Tessitore and it was strongly implied that this is part of ESPN trying to back away from its adversarial role with the NFL under new president Jimmy Pitaro. Some of ESPN’s best reporters — Mark FainaruWada and his brother Steve Fainaru, Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wicker- sham, the people at Outside The Lines — have consistently uncovered important and complex issues with how the most popular league in America runs.
So MNF tried to make football just plain ol’ fun football again, and in a relatively fun year it still stinks. It’s not even just that it’s simple: there is a lot of successful non-reflective simplicity in the world today. It’s that they’re bad at it. Curtis wrote Tessitore “wants to reclaim a lost, ’70s ideal of being. When you could flip on the game and pour yourself a drink and talk about football in an untortured way.”
Which kind of means treating people like they’re dumb, or like they don’t want to be smart, which is admittedly popular these days. Look, good broadcasting, like anything, is difficult. And pretending that things aren’t complicated and that there are no consequences to our entertainment … well, it’s gotten us this far.
Anyway, this week on Monday Night Football the Buffalo Bills are home to the New England Patriots. The announcers are going to have some space to fill. Get ready.
Last week this space went 11-3, a neartotal reversal of the week before. Get unnecessarily excited about THAT. As always, all lines could change.