‘Monday Night Football’ a week in the making
Broadcast requires extensive preparation
Buffalo and Orchard Park In a downtown Buffalo hotel, where they were headquartered for the weekend, more than 30 members of ESPN’S “Monday Night Football” crew convened in a conference room.
They arrived one or two at a time, fashion be damned. Tshirts and polo shirts, blue jeans and shorts, sandals and slippers. All were appropriate attire. Jeff Triplette, a former referee who works as a rules analyst, donned a Minnesota Vikings shirt.
Nine hours later they would produce a telecast between the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots. This was the final production meeting, the culmination of a week’s worth of preparation for a three-hour TV show.
This isn’t a matter of showing up and waiting for a technician to say “lights, camera, action!”
“People will throw out that phrase, ‘There aren’t enough minutes in the day,’ ” said Joe Tessitore, the Schenectady-bred play-by-play announcer in his first season of doing the package. “That is so true when you’re doing Monday Night Football. You barely have time to breathe
during the week if you want to do this the right way.”
Getting it right is the goal for those working on ESPN’S most coveted property. Tessitore, a former WRGB (CBS-6) weekend sports anchor, has worked at the network for 17 years, calling college football and basketball, boxing and other sports, but nothing draws the audience and scrutiny of Monday Night Football, which celebrates its 50th year in 2019.
“I do believe my TV self is similar to my real-life self,” said Tessitore, only the sixth play-byplay announcer in MNF’S illustrious history. “It’s just who I am, but if you think that when the Hank Williams Jr. music goes on, and the red light goes on, that you’re not aware of the fact that you’re on Monday Night Football, you’re lying to yourself. It doesn’t mean I’m speaking differently, but you’re aware, and there’s an expectation.”
Before the music plays, before the Monday morning meeting at the hotel, a lot of planning and effort goes into the production.
‘Terrible Tuesday’
The stadium is barely empty from the preceding game when Jay Rothman, producer of MNF since ESPN acquired the package in 2006, begins to focus on the following Monday night.
“It starts as soon as the game is over,” Rothman said. “Tuesday is a travel day, but we’re watching the game, ripping it apart.”
Once the game ends, Rothman reviews a tape of the telecast on a laptop. His screen contains three video feeds — the pictures seen by millions of viewers, one focused on booth announcers Tessitore and Jason Witten, and another showing Booger Mcfarland, who does his analysis from a cart that roams the sideline.
“I always say, ‘I’ll give you guys Tuesday off, and then we’ll talk on Wednesday,’ ” Rothman said. “We get home, we’re all exhausted. It’s brutal. I call it ‘Terrible Tuesday.’ It is complete physical and mental exhaustion, but I have to watch and get through it. If we don’t speak Tuesday night, we’ll talk Wednesday, and we’ll critique the show.”
All of the announcers spend Wednesday watching film of both teams. It also is a day when MNF news editor Jim Carr prepares a document, usually around 40 pages, with excerpts of stories written about both
teams and other valuable notes.
“That’s a very slow read,” Tessitore said.
Tessitore carves out a small chunk of time Wednesday evening to have tea with his wife, Rebecca, and “watch one episode of a TV show with her.”
Production call in Bristol
The intensity increases Thursday. Rothman has a conference call in the morning with the talent, and there is a two-hour meeting — involving the same folks who will gather Monday morning before the game — at noon at the network’s Bristol, Conn., headquarters.
“We start talking about our creative tool box,” Rothman said. “What are the things we want to bring to the show? I would say 70 percent of it falls to the floor, you’ll never see it, but of it, in the heat of the battle, what is the appropriate content to drive into the game?”
Rothman critiques production aspects of the preceding telecast. He discusses which players they want to interview when they get to the game site.
Tessitore spends Thursday in Bristol, attending the meeting and sitting with senior researcher John Parolin. Storylines are discussed. Statistical and story packages are developed.
Friday is “divide and conquer,” Rothman said. “There’s a lot of pre-production done, whether it’s graphics being developed, video being edited based on our creative content meeting.”
Tessitore stays home Fridays, finalizing his “board” — a large chart containing depth charts and biographical tidbits on every player for both teams.
“Itrytolockinonavisualid,” he said. “I’ve got my board set,
I’ve got my prep set, I’m in a good place. I watch film, and I almost test myself. Now it’s about, OK, you have to execute, you have to perform. Who’s No. 25? Who’s
No. 17? Who’s No. 2? Who’s No. 3? Who’s No. 85? Who’s No. 84. It’s a goal-line play, who should be on the field? They’re in an empty set, who would be on the field for the Patriots? I test myself in that way.”
Meeting with the teams
Travel to the game site usually occurssaturdaymorning,although it can be Friday night on longer trips. The goal is to arrive in time to watch the home team’s Saturday practice, usually in the early afternoon.
After practice, the game announcers, including sideline reporter Lisa Salters, along with Rothman, Parolin and
director Chip Dean engage in individual interviews with five or six coaches and players from the home team. The same occurs Sunday evening with the visiting club, which the MNF crew will meet at the team’s hotel.
Most information gained from these discussions is embargoed until the game telecast.
“They understand the jobs we have to do,” Rothman said. “I’ve always felt that there’s a respect and a trust and an understanding that they speak to us differently than they do beat reporters. The information we get is more intimate, more unique, there’s a level of trust.”
Saturday night includes dinner with the entire crew, “which ends up talking ball,” Tessitore said. “Now we’re all together and we can unwind.”
Witten and Mcfarland have a one-hour meeting Sunday morning with producers to discuss analysis. Tessitore sits in on that, as well. The producers will create replay and graphics packages to illustrate the points the analysts are trying to make.
Monday: It’s Game Day
The hotel conference room has a large rectangular table in the middle with seats for 17 or 18 people. Two longer, narrow tables run behind each side. Three easels in the front of the room contain bullet points.
One says:
Tonight — movie
(1) Scene, crowd tough
(2) Patriot Way “Smart Approach”
(3) Thurman Thomas Bills greats
All would be discussed during the Monday morning meeting, which lasts a little more than one hour. The cast seems enthused to produce a telecast in Orchard Park, which hasn’t had a MNF home game in 10 years. Much of the football analysis centers on the Patriots’ “secret sauce.” Thomas will have his jersey number retired at halftime.
“Tonight, halfway point (of the season), we have an opportunity to get better,” Rothman tells the staff. “I’m fired up about it.
“As old as this stadium is, and the grim day that it is, the place looks great on TV, it’s electric and it rocks, and the crowd’s insane. I hope to God the Bills stay in the game, or maybe pull the upset.”
Tessitore speaks next, giving out what he calls “Joyful Craftsman” awards to two members of the crew. There are bottles of wine or gift certificates attached.
“I do that in the Thursday meeting, and I do that in the Sunday meeting,” he said. “I like positive reinforcement. I like for people to be rewarded for their energy and their enthusiasm and taking on their job with pure alacrity. I want enthusiastic readiness to come do their job.”
The crew reviews what it has planned all week. Some of the graphics packages are shown.
Rothman says there will be a moment of silence before the game to honor the memory of the shooting victims in Pittsburgh. The preliminary plan is to air that and the national anthem live. The anthem usually is played while ESPN is in commercial.
There is extensive discussion on a pregame profile Salters has done on Patriots wide receiver Josh Gordon. Trying to get the timing right on all of the pregame elements is a concern.
Several crew members stay around after the meeting to tie up loose ends. Tessitore sits with his spotter, Mike Black, a former Arena Football League kicker. “We want to be mistake-free,” Tessitore said.
Ready for some football
After he leaves the meeting, Tessitore retreats to his room to mentally prepare for the telecast.
“I’ll work out. I’ll put on music and just get myself to a good mental place,” he said. “I know it sounds like extreme, but at a certain point it’s performance. I believe that anyway.”
Tessitore leaves the hotel at 3:45 p.m. to head to the stadium, a 15-minute drive. He tapes up his boards to the walls and counters in the 50-yard-line booth. Before the 8:15 p.m. kickoff, the talent goes through rehearsals.
“Ten minutes before we go on the air,” Tessitore said, “Scotty Prather, our lead audio guy who’s excellent, I’m going to put those headsets on, and literally right before we go on Monday Night Football, he’s going to play Chuck Mangione, Earth, Wind and Fire, Frank Sinatra and Journey. I guarantee you he’ll play Journey, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ right before we go on air.”
Despite all the preparation, the crew encounters early issues. The moment of silence occurs while the network is in commercial, so Tessitore has to narrate a taped version. The feature on Gordon is clouded by an NFL Network report that the Patriots receiver will be disciplined for being late to a meeting, so Salters includes that in her report.
The game starts, and Tessitore quickly spots that wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson is lined up in the backfield. He then notices that Gordon is on the field to start the game, contrary to the NFL Network report.
None of this seems to fluster Tessitore, who was as prepared for this telecast as the Patriots were for the Bills.
During a break, he gets a laugh out of the dozen or so crammed into the booth when he notices red lights shining on the mezzanine level of New Era Field. “Those are heat lamps, aren’t they? Like French fries in the deli.”
ESPN gets its wish of a competitive game, at least through three quarters. The overnight ratings were 10 percent higher than the corresponding week of last season. There would be little time to celebrate.
Preparation for Monday night’s Titans-cowboys matchup “starts the moment we have our last cold beer the Monday night before,” Tessitore said.
pdougherty@timesunion.com 518-454-5416 @Pete_dougherty