Phil Mushnick phil.mushnick@nypost.com
EQUALTIME
“The NFL Today” on CBS is just one of the cookie-cutter pregame shows that leaves viewers wanting more.
EVERY year at about this time, I stop to consider whether the streak is alive. Not that anyone should care, but it is: In the nearly 40 years I’ve written this column, not once have I received word from even one reader that he or she favors one NFL studio pregame show over any other, let alone all others. It has never come up. The only thing recognized is that the shows — on CBS, Fox, ESPN, NFL Network — grow longer, thus fueling their commercial value and viewer uselessness.
No network even tries to distinguish its pregame show from the rest. They are, in weekly form, forced laughter festivals, intentionally dull and flat, as if Roger Goodell holds the master circuit to cut the juice and burn the contract if someone dares detail why a player is out with “off-the-field issues.” The truth, in Goodell’s NFL, is an act of sedition.
“So Coach, who do you like in today’s Seahawks-Lions, to be seen right here on Fox?” “Well, they first have to establish the run ...” Apparently we’re supposed to care about the answer, but we don’t, never have and never will. Yet the scripts never change.
There will be irrelevant stats thrown in to feign preparation and enlightenment, and perhaps CBS’s “Weekend” Boomer Esiason, the phony, will resume his role as a tonguetied choir boy while Fox’s Jimmy Johnson still wears that look that he can’t believe he’s paid for this.
The panelists, while they come and go, have grown in per-telecast number, thus further ensuring that intelligent conversation will be lost to one-sentence in-and-outs. And even more forced belly laughs.
Fox’s Jay Glazer seems a strong source on late player scratches and rumors, but that’s it.
So how does a network attract then sustain loyal NFL pregame audience? How would any of them know if none have even bothered to try?
Early this season I saw a defensive back, stretched out on the field, nearly motionless after a helmet-to-shoulder-pad collision. His head was immobilized, and soon a gurney carried him to an ambulance that departed. The sideline reporter noted his arms were moving and said she’d keep us posted. Then what?
Who rides to the hospital with the player? What’s going on in the player’s mind as he stares at the inside roof of the ambulance? How are his personal belongings, including his street clothing, transported to the hospital? If he’s released in a vastly improved condition, who accompanies him home, especially by airplane from an away game?
Does the team employ a staff to provide such aid, comfort and services? We’ve witnessed the start of such dramas, but how do they play out?
This is where I’d include a six-minute piece within a pregame show.
What’s practice week like for a long snapper? That line judge also works at a penitentiary? Or at a reptile refuge? Show and tell us their stories. Give us more, give us something, anything better. Besides big, loud laughs at gags that wouldn’t naturally emit a grin, give us a chance to say to ourselves, “That was pretty interesting.”
But on we go, keeping it dull, keeping network hands safe and clean as they make nothing out of something. Rinse, repeat.