Did Desmond Howard mean to take a shot at ESPN senior college football writer Pete Thamel when College GameDay was at Michigan/Ohio State in November? Howard said that wasn’t the case at all.
Howard was a guest on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday, and co-host Ty Schmidt did his best Thamel impersonation to figure out if the two were able to bury the hatchet after Desmond’s viral “put your big boy pants on” line.
“Just curious after the College GameDay in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I was inside the stadium unfortunately because I couldn’t go out there. Has the score been settled?” Schmidt asked. “I’ll be honest with you, you got that great dig in on me. You said, ‘Hey Pete, you know you did all this reporting, maybe put your big boy pants on and come out here and kinda face the mongrels in the Michigan crowd.”
After Howard collected himself from laughing at Ty’s impersonation, he responded saying no bad blood ever developed between he and Pete Thamel after his comment. He chalked it up to people blowing it completely out of proportion.
“There was never a score to settle,” he said. “Everything is clickbait nowadays, and so people try to make something small out of something big. And that’s exactly what that was.”
McAfee jumped in saying it was clear that Howard was just trying to make a joke at Thamel’s expense, since Pete’s reporting on the scandals at Michigan drew the ire of Wolverine fans. Desmond Howard said that’s exactly what he was doing was joking.
“I thought it was funny,” Howard said. “I thought it was hilarious personally, you know what I mean?”
“I think Des was talking shit and then like the way it went, especially with how Pete Thamel became public enemy number one for this entire thing, it got taken the other way,” McAfee responded.
McAfee went further to defend the cohesiveness of the unit of people involved in making College GameDay come to life every week during the season.
“That College GameDay production room, we got a good team over there,” McAfee said, making a gesture with his hands to signify how tight everyone is.
UAB head football coach Trent Dilfer loved his first five years at ESPN and was appreciative of the platform and the opportunity to work with so many talented people, but then it got weird.
Dilfer was an NFL analyst for ESPN from 2008-17, and he told Adam Breneman on a recent appearance on his YouTube show Next Up that things in Bristol shifted for the worst after around 2012.
“TV got weird, man. It got people telling you what you should be talking about and what was important, what wasn’t important,” Dilfer said. “It wasn’t about football all of a sudden. The politics and the building started determining what people got the chance to say what where.”
“If it was a hot-button topic that Twitter, at the time, was trending on then it made the front of the show whether it was a premier game or not,” he continued. “Like all these other things started creeping in. And that with on top of me going from the Bay Area in California on a red-eye to New York and car servicing from New York to Bristol. And then a flight to Monday Night Football and a flight back to the West Coast.”
Trent Dilfer said it got to the point where he was just being spread way too thin.
“Things start piling up and I didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “And it wasn’t all the TV stuff, it was just a lifestyle. And then I made some really stupid decisions. I got involved in a contract negotiation that I should not have done looking back at it, which made things weird with my bosses.”
Eventually, the writing was on the wall that he needed to go his own way.
“It just got funky at the end, and it was better for everybody that I was off TV,” Dilfer said. “And I’m sure the 50% that hated me are like, ‘Great, get him off.'”
Wearing a uniform prominently displaying the team logo and player number, each player on the team prepares to take the gridiron. Regardless of the weather, the players run down the tunnel and are introduced to the crowd in a packed stadium, quickly becoming acclimated to their environment as they look for a victory. From the moment the coin flips until the end of the game, these athletes possess an intense focus on winning the contest and subsequently react to dynamic circumstances. Although he is no longer playing, Cris Collinsworth still takes center stage on gameday, except from inside a broadcast booth aligned with midfield.
While teams are able to accurately prognosticate parts of the game, real-time adjustments and other factors can engender unpredictable occurrences and outcomes. Collinsworth knows this well, unexpectedly stepping into the Sunday Night Football booth two years after returning to NBC Sports. Fifteen seasons later, he has been on the call for five Super Bowl championships and is the longest-tenured analyst in the history of an NFL prime-time television broadcast package.
As Collinsworth continues his work on Sunday Night Football with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico, sideline reporter Melissa Stark, director Drew Esocoff and coordinating producer Rob Hyland, he considers himself fortunate to be part of a stellar, cohesive group of teammates.
“There’s not the in-fighting; there’s not the silliness that can go on in the corporate world sometimes,” Collinsworth said. “It’s really [that] everybody is talented and trying to pull their weight and make it easier, not harder on our co-workers.”
Throughout his playing career, Collinsworth was honored with various accolades and merits recognizing his aptitude and excellence on the football field. These characteristics have ostensibly evinced themselves as a sports media professional as a 17-time recipient of a Sports Emmy Award and recent inductee into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Collinsworth was taken aback to see a preponderance of his colleagues, family and friends on hand for the ceremony.
“It’s funny – those Hall of Fame or awards kind of ceremonies forced me to do something I don’t do comfortably, which is look backwards,” Collinsworth said. “I try to always look forward, but that night forced me to look backwards and really appreciate how lucky I am to have the kind of people I have in my life.”
Before beginning his work in sports media, Collinsworth played college football at the University of Florida where he was a standout wide receiver and completed a degree in accounting. Upon being drafted to the National Football League by the Cincinnati Bengals, he earned Pro Bowl honors and finished second in voting for the Offensive Rookie of the Year award.
After his retirement from the league, Collinsworth began his immersion into media as the host of a sports talk radio show on 700 WLW. Over the next decade, he interacted with an innumerable number of callers and discussed collegiate and professional sports in the Cincinnati area.
Bob Trumpy, a former tight end for the Bengals, preceded him in the role before departing the outlet to take on more assignments calling games for NBC Sports both on television and radio. Even though he was approaching his third of eight seasons in the NFL, Collinsworth filled in for Trumpy for a previous edition of the Sports Talk program alongside Jeff Ruby. By the time he was added to the fill-in rotation in 1988, he knew of the task at hand.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Collinsworth said. “You go in a studio; you’ve got three hours in a microphone and people think that the listeners just call no matter what you do. They don’t. You’ve got to make them call; you’ve got to make them want to call.”
Collinsworth worked with various radio hosts such as Andy Furman and Bill Cunningham and aimed to hone his craft. He made mistakes along the way and discovered different nuances of the medium while also being a good teammate for his colleagues. Moreover, he had to be genuine with his audience in order to get the listeners to engage with the program, offering his opinions on the teams and making sales calls on behalf of the company.
“You had to welcome guests in that you may not otherwise have on the show and interview people [where] you didn’t know anything about them or their sport,” Collinsworth said. “Yeah, it was a better education than I got doing anything else in my life, I’ll say that for sure.”
At the same time, Collinsworth was attending law school at the University of Cincinnati and might have considered a career as a tax attorney had he not worked in sports media. Three weeks after he was cut by the Bengals, Collinsworth was offered and subsequently accepted a position on the HBO program Inside the NFL as a reporter responsible for filing features. Aside from the radio show, legal studies and reporting work, he also filled in as a color commentator on four college football games for NBC Sports. By the next year, Collinsworth was on nine of these live game broadcasts and became a regular member of the studio cast of Inside the NFL – all while continuing to host on the radio.
“I was talking about everybody, everything, everywhere,” Collinsworth said. “…There was no internet; [it] wasn’t like you could look up something on the internet, so whatever you knew was something you saw or read about, and it was just wild. The decade of the ‘90s clearly was the craziest time of my life.”
Utilizing the versatility he strived to develop, Collinsworth seamlessly made the move into the studio as a member of The NFL on NBC Pregame Show beginning in the 1996 season. Every week, he provided his insights and intellect surrounding the slate of games taking place around the league. Collinsworth was on a panel with host Greg Gumbel and analysts Joe Gibbs and Ahmad Rashad before a seminal moment in the broadcast history of the NFL occurred.
NBC lost broadcasting rights to the NFL when CBS agreed to an eight-year contract with the league to serve as the television home of all AFC games, a deal that was worth an estimated $500 million per year. At the suggestion of NBC Sports company chairman Dick Ebersol, Collinsworth left the outlet and joined FOX Sports as part of its FOX NFL Sunday studio program, retaining his presence within the fabric of football coverage. Over the ensuing four seasons, he had the chance to work alongside host James Brown and analysts Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long, augmenting his ability to seamlessly implement entertainment and moments of levity into nuanced football esoterica.
“I’m glad I did,” Collinsworth said of leaving NBC Sports. “I learned a lot from them and then skipped over to do the games.”
FOX Sports shuffled its announcing lineup in 2002, assigning Collinsworth to a new three-person booth including play-by-play announcer Joe Buck and color commentator Troy Aikman. The alteration resulted from John Madden’s decision to sign a contract to call Monday Night Football games on ABC with play-by-play announcer Al Michaels after his contract expired, timing with Pat Summerall’s initial retirement.
Rather than having one analyst replace the distinguished broadcaster and former Super Bowl champion with the Oakland Raiders, the network opted to instantiate a new lead booth. The endeavor marked a new challenge for Collinsworth since he had never been part of a broadcast triumvirate before. Additionally, he continued to host his Sports Talk radio program while having a family and traveling the country to call these weekly matchups.
“Ordinarily you hit a button and you talk to the producer and you tell them what you want to talk about,” Collinsworth explained. “Well Troy and I were seeing different things all the time, and Richie Zyontz, our poor producer; it was like a gameshow. Did Troy or I hit the button first to get into Richie to try and say something?”
NBC agreed to a six-year contract that granted it rights to a new league prime-time television broadcast package, Sunday Night Football, and two Super Bowl championship games, ahead of the 2006 season.
“When NBC got football back, Dick Ebersol called me right away and I ended up coming back to NBC,” Collinsworth said. “I did the studio again for about three years there and then John retired – surprised all of us – and that’s when I went back in to replace him again.”
Prior to that time though, Collinsworth’s presence was expanding as a member of three different broadcast networks covering the NFL. Whether it was working on Football Night of America on NBC, co-hosting Inside the NFL on HBO or contributing to NFL Network programming, his shrewd expertise and attention to detail was conspicuous.
When he started working with Al Michaels regularly on Sunday Night Football in 2009, he had been known as someone who tried to be authentic with the audience. After all, he had balanced objectivity and subjectivity for several years in a variety of different roles where he gradually earned the trust of consumers.
“I think I learned that you don’t have to be mean-spirited, but you’ve got to be honest and you’ve got to be willing to say what others may not feel comfortable saying because your relationship isn’t really with the players and coaches anymore; it’s with the audience,” Collinsworth articulated. “It’s with the people that are watching on television, and you have to earn their trust that whether it’s something positive or negative that you’re saying, it’s what you honestly believe.”
Collinsworth has always tried to take the approach that he is supplying commentaries for the benefit of the viewers. Throughout the week while fans take part in activities unrelated to the game, he is watching film, having conversations with personnel and determining what he believes will be salient and apropos before kickoff.
Much like suiting up on the field though, the game is unpredictable and it is imperative to be nimble enough to adjust in real time. Maintaining a keen awareness of his audience filled with consumers possessing varied levels of fandom, he does not want to “sell anyone anything;” rather, he aspires to convey his knowledge without overwhelming viewers.
“They want to take three hours and watch a football game and not have the announcer wear them out [or] feel like the announcer’s a shill for players and coaches in the league,” Collinsworth said, “but know that I’ve done my homework and hopefully it’s a little bit fun [and] a little bit relaxing…. I want to tell you I’ve researched it for a whole week [and that] I know what’s going on with these teams, and by the end of it, I hope you know a little bit more about it as well.”
Aside from his pedagogical abilities wherein he translates recondite concepts into comprehensive parlance with aplomb, Collinsworth has become synonymous with entertaining aspects of the game. When NBC previously opened Sunday Night Football games, Al Michaels would appear solo on camera to deliver a monologue about the game before the shot panned to include Collinsworth in the frame. That tradition ended when Mike Tirico assumed play-by-play responsibilities on the broadcast, but Collinsworth was worried that Michaels’ departure would cause more than just a change in the open format.
“Mike is really talented – I mean really talented – and really works hard,” Collinsworth said. “He does all the special teams stuff for us, he talks to the general managers most weeks [and] he is a research machine. He just absolutely is and I have great respect for that, but we’ve also kind of struck a personal relationship that I was afraid I was going to really miss because Al and I were really good friends.”
NBC Sports recently underwent a change in leadership with the appointment of new division president Rick Cordella. Collinsworth has great respect for the broadcast network, claiming that Dick Ebersol is probably the person who has had the greatest influence on him outside of family members. Ebersol resigned from the company in 2011 and was succeeded by Mark Lazarus, who currently serves as the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group.
“[He was] a guy who believed in me when I gave him no reason to believe in me or when I was making big mistakes or whatever,” Collinsworth said. “He just kept giving me new opportunities and [I will] be forever grateful to him. And maybe it’s part of Dick’s legacy – he hired most of the people that work at NBC now – but they’re just good people and everybody wants to make it better.”
Before Cordella’s promotion, Pete Bevacqua had been leading the business unit, which also broadcasts games in the Big Ten Conference, NASCAR and the Olympic Games. Bevacqua left the network to become the new athletic director of the University of Notre Dame, with whom NBC recently inked a new contract to extend their partnership of broadcasting the football team’s home games. Collinsworth’s son, Jac, is the play-by-play announcer on those games and co-hosts Football Night in America, oftentimes from the site of the game itself.
“Mark Lazarus really set the tone when he came in, and he ultimately had to do the impossible – which is sort of like when I had to replace John Madden – he had to replace Dick Ebersol, and then he just set up a structure that continued that way,” Collinsworth said. “It’s just been – as long as I’ve been there, it’s just been an easy place to go to work and a place you want to go to work.”
Collinsworth currently has two more years under contract with NBC Sports to deliver analysis in the Sunday Night Football booth. The network is slated to broadcast Super Bowl LX in two seasons from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., which would mark his sixth time calling the championship contest. Although there is ambiguity surrounding what lies beyond that, Collinsworth will always have a tie to the game of football both on and off the gridiron and looks forward to the broadcasts to come.
“We’ll see how I’m doing after that [and] what they want to do,” Collinsworth said pertaining to his future in the broadcast booth. “I really don’t know; I really haven’t thought about that too much, so we’ll figure it out when we get there.”
Almost two weeks after suffering a medical emergency, Columbus Blue Jackets radio play-by-play voice Bob McElligott returned to the airwaves.
McElligott posted a reel to his Instagram ahead of the Blue Jackets game Wednesday night against the New Jersey Devils, providing an update on what happened and where he’s been since December 16th.
He recalled coming home from a road game in Toronto and waking up the next morning with half his tongue swollen. After eventually going to the ER, his whole tongue was swollen. Doctors told McElligott that the swelling could cut off his airway. He remembered things moving fairly quickly at the hospital before being sedated and put on a ventilator for two days.
McElligott said doctors determined he triggered a food allergy.
“It appears that I ingested something that I have an allergy to,” he said. “What that is right now I don’t know. But that’s what triggered this entire outburst.”
He encouraged everyone watching to not wait to get tested for any potential allergies.
“If you’ve ever thought about getting tested for allergies, or getting your kids tested, it might be a good idea,” he said. “Because for over 50 years I thought I was allergic to nothing. But now I guess there is something, and it was pretty bad.”
McElligott has been trying to rest and recover in the meantime. He finished his message by thanking everyone who helped or supported him through the whole endeavor.
“It starts with my wife Kathy, who I call my protector and my hero,” he said. “She gets mad at me for saying that, because she doesn’t feel that she did much. She did so much. She sat by my side that entire time and made sure I was taken care of. There’s no value you can put on that.”
Bob McElligott also thanked the doctors and nurses who he feels saved his life, as well as thanking Blue Jackets management and ownership for their support and making sure his family was taken care of while he was down and out.
“Now with all that being said, I’m gonna give it a go tonight,” McElligott said announcing his return in Newark. He mentioned that his voice was sounding extra raspy because he was coming off the steroid doctors prescribed him and just asked listeners to bear with him as he gets his voice back to normal.
Pregame, intermission, and postgame host Dylan Tyrer called the games in McElligott’s absence.
Grateful and determined at 26 years old, Madison Scarpino has accomplished what takes some journalists their entire career to achieve: becoming a national reporter.
“I would love watching things like the Today Show or Good Morning America or Fox and Friends and just thought, you know, that would be a really cool career,” Scarpino told Barrett News Media over Zoom.
She began her new role at Fox News on December 4th and said she now has the opportunity to work with reporters who’ve inspired her, “Aishah Hasnie is someone that I’ve really enjoyed watching her work and would love to be the type of journalist that she is today.”
The oldest of three, Madison Scarpino says her family were not big news watchers and often moved. “I actually don’t really have a hometown. My dad’s in the Navy, so I moved around every two to three years my whole life, which is kind of crazy.” She added, “Everyone always says like, ‘Oh my gosh, it must be so hard.’ But it’s really all I ever knew and I think it definitely set me up for the stuff that I do now.”
Moving across the country, Scarpino’s experienced so many parts of the United States but to keep things simple she often says, “I’m from Florida because I lived in Jacksonville twice. And then I graduated high school in Tampa.”
Tampa — also known as “The Big Guava” — is where Scarpino feels the most connected because she said, “I loved my high school experience,” adding, “I went to school, called Tampa Catholic and made some really good friends there and, you know, I think it’s a pretty diverse place.”
One unexpected love of Scarpino’s from her Tampa days? Cuban culture.
“There’s a big Cuban population there and a lot of my friends are Cuban. I fell in love with that culture and just everything,” she later added, “I’m Italian and we take family very seriously. And just that having that tight-knit circle, I think it’s very similar to the Cuban culture. I also love the food that they make. One of my best friend’s mom makes like the best Mojo pork.”
She attended The University of Mississippi and graduated in 2020. Of her time at Ole Miss she said, “I did go to a lot of games in the Grove, which is just, you go to any city school and they have these big blowout tailgates and celebrations like pre-game, during the game, post-game.”
However, her favorite memory from college is not Rebel football but, “The school news station, though, that is just where I fell in love with what now is my absolute passion.” Scarpino continued to say. “Once I started at Newswatch [at] Ole Miss and majored in broadcast journalism, I figured, let’s try this out.”
Starting out as a weather reporter, she told herself, “If I don’t like being in front of the camera, I feel uncomfortable. I don’t have to do this. I could do radio, I could do print.” She said of herself then. “I was very nervous at first. But being a weather reporter was a lot of ad-libbing at Ole Miss versus following an actual script and I just became more and more comfortable at it.”
Becoming more comfortable on air, she later found her journalistic passion. “I started kind of doing more hard news stories and, you know, just more local news type stuff and that’s when I kind of realized this is more what I think I’m good at,” she added, “Being able to tell people’s stories, especially when it comes to big breaking news, things that a lot of people care about being able to do that just meant a lot to me.”
From the Ole Miss Newsroom, she became an MMJ in Huntsville, Alabama. She worked out of the bureau for the rural counties in the Tennessee Valley on NBC affiliate WFAA 48. Madison Scarpino then moved on to Fox’s MMR program.
Created in 2011, the rigorous program sends reporters across the country to shoot, produce, edit, and report content for Fox News Media platforms. In a press release, the network said after two years the hope is to help reporters become stronger journalists in the field. Many new faces within the Fox conglomerate began in the MMR program including correspondents Garrett Tenney, Hillary Vaughn, Maddy Rivera, and Madison Scarpino.
Of her time in the program Scarpino said, “I think that being in MMR has really set me up for success in this position. Again, I have to earn that and I’m looking forward to working as hard as I can and being the best journalist that I can at this level.”
She added, “Being able to really only focus on national news and know how network news works and just travel around the country, I get to see many different parts of it and cultures. I think without that I would not be ready for the position that I am in today.”
During Scarpino’s tenure in the MMR program, she was sent across the country to cover several mass shootings including the ones in Highland Park, Dallas, and the Covenant School in Nashville. “I’ll never forget the people in that area were more than willing to talk to me and just wanted to say like, how amazing of a community it was and just like how the people want to come together [after a tragedy like] this,” Scarpino said. “When you get to actually talk to people in the community and see how they’re feeling. That’s what sticks with me the most.”
For those looking to follow in Scarpino’s footsteps her advice is simple. “There are going to be days that you have to come in early and stay late or go the extra mile to make it far in this industry. And that’s not always the most fun thing to do. But if you really love this career, it will pay off.”
Madison Scarpino recognizes the timing of her accomplishments is rare but said, “I feel very lucky to be in the position that I’m in.” She said her goal right now is simple, “I want to focus on just being the best journalist that I can [and] become someone who people trust and want to watch.”
This past week marked the end of an era in sports television, and you may have missed it. Real Sports, the HBO sports anthology series, marked its final episode after 29 years on the air. This vital program was more than just a sports version of 60 Minutes.
Hosted by the eminent Bryant Gumbel,Real Sports was truly in a class by itself, singular in sports journalism excellence. It was old-school, hardscrabble, thoughtful sports reporting come to life on the air. Moreover, Real Sports was light years ahead of the curve in moving sports into political and social themes.
The program combined the sobering reality of news with the gleeful escape of sports, and Gumbel appeared to be every bit the proud parent when his correspondents joined him in studio after another groundbreaking feature.
Real Sports featured a host of distinguished reporters including Bernard Goldberg, Frank Deford, Armen Keteyian, James Brown, Mary Carillo, Andrea Kremer, David Scott, Jon Frankel, and Soledad O’Brien. The latter five gathered with Gumbel for a roundtable reflection on Real Sports’ final edition. Over the years, each of Real Sports’ clever journalists brought their talent and temperament to a bevy of stories.
The show changed quality sports TV from an exception to a habit garnering numerous Emmys and the 2006 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for broadcast journalism, the first such award for a sports program.
Despite the honors, let’s face it, Real Sportswas not for everyone. If your idea of a good sports show is quick blurbs, hot takes, soundbites, endless graphics, screaming hosts, and inane storylines about betting, fantasy sports, and garden variety BS, it definitely was not your cup of tea.
And that’s not to say that the aforementioned items are bad. In fact, they can make for a really fun sports viewing experience, but that’s not what Real Sports was all about. The program was not merely the soul, but in fact, the conscience of sports television.
Listen, we all like guilty pleasures. Mainstream shows like First Take, The Pat McAfee Show, Undisputed, Speak, First Things First, and Pardon the Interruption are all about opinionated, verbose, and cutting sports commentary. On each of these shows, the talking heads tell the story.
Conversely, on Real Sports, Gumbel and the reporters said very little. It was the story that spoke volumes. The words of the host and reporters were designed to set up the essence of each subject.
The program has long been lauded for pushing the envelope of sports storylines, but this is an understatement. Real Sports didn’t just push the envelope, it tore it into pieces, slammed it on the floor, and stepped on it. Indeed, there was no envelope left to push.
On the final episode of the program, one of the subjects discussed was the incredibly varied spectrum of sports that the show covered. Real Sports did not just react to headlines. Gumbel and company did not wait for stories to come to them. They went out and found the stories, and what stories they were.
The clichéd movie critic line reads, “I laughed and cried.” On Real Sports, cliché became commonplace. All of the reporters who worked with Gumbel were excellent. For me, a few stand out prominently.
Andrea Kremer always brought professionalism, content, persistence, and heart to every story she did. Mary Carillo, a former pro tennis player, was a quiet assassin — equal parts empathetic and emphatic, tender and tough. David Scott was the world traveler, bringing class, presence, and pointed questions to the most remote of locations and productions.
Still, when it came down to exposing corruption, greed, ill will, or just plain stupidity in the world of sports, there was no one better than the late Bernard Goldberg. This dude was a hardened, grizzled reporter with unmatched wit and guile.
Goldberg always struck me as a guy who could dine with aristocrats at a five-star restaurant, then go across the street and play craps in the back room of a dive bar. Interview subjects didn’t screw around with Goldberg. The guy would slice them up with his intellect and eat them for lunch with his raised eyebrow, ironic slant.
Every great symphony needs a conductor, and on Real Sports, the unquestioned maestro was Gumbel. Since bursting onto the national scene in 1975 as host of NBC’s NFL, MLB, and NCAA basketball coverage, Gumbel has been a lightning rod for everyone from David Letterman to Dave Chappelle.
He spent 15 years (1982-97) as the cohost of NBC’s Today show and has always been an intensely private man, eschewing the showbiz spotlight. Gumbel’s air of seriousness has tagged him with the labels aloof, hard to reach, and stoic. Don’t believe everything you read.
A few years back, Real Sports correspondent James Brown interviewed then-Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb. In the interview, McNabb stated that that African-American quarterbacks are judged differently than their white counterparts. The statement incurred the wrath of media types everywhere.
FOX’s Terry Bradshaw dismissed McNabb’s feelings saying that McNabb needed some love. Barry Switzer, also a FOX analyst at the time, implied that McNabb was degrading black quarterbacks who came before him.
I wrote a column defending McNabb stating that I cannot judge him because I am neither black nor an NFL quarterback. Out of the blue, I received an email from Gumbel agreeing with my assertion.
I used the opportunity to ask Gumbel if he would consider doing an interview with me. As expected, he very politely declined saying that he prefers not to do interviews and speak publicly.
A few weeks later, Gumbel emailed again. He told me that he was doing a speaking engagement and felt that it was only fair that he agree to be interviewed by me since I had asked first. The gesture belied his reputation for standoffishness. In the interview, he could not have been more enthusiastic and accommodating.
I’m sure there are a lot of sports fans who don’t care one bit that Real Sports has signed off the airwaves. For those of you whose channel flipping and ceaseless streaming never stopped on this program, too bad, you missed out on a show that was equal parts quiet and deafening, serious and hilarious, dark and brilliant.
Real Sports uncovered hidden tyrannies, exposed criminals, showcased the best, and vilified the worst people in sports. If this sounds like a eulogy, it might just be that the genre of sports television that Real Sports championed is dead, or at the very least taking its final breaths. Depth has been replaced by dumbness, feeling by fanfare, and conversation by cussing.
Some may counter that Real Sports was a relic of the past, lacking a contemporary feel and pace. Wrong again. Real Sports was gritty, tough, argumentative, controversial, tense, surprising, dangerous, and just plain ballsy. It took more chances than any show on television today. In truth, there has never been a more aptly named program on television. Real Sports. Damn right, it was.
93 WIBC midday host Rob Kendall has signed an extension to remain with the Indianapolis news/talk station.
In a post to Facebook, Kendall revealed he had signed an extension to stay with 93 WIBC through 2025.
“Thank you to each and every one of you who invest your time in Kendall & Casey each day and make our ratings so fabulous! We appreciate you making us a part of your lives,” wrote Kendall. “Here’s to two more years of holding politicians accountable and entertaining the masses!”
Kendall joined the station in 2016 and was paired with Mock from Chicks on the Right, before she departed to focus on her digital efforts. Rob Kendall was subsequently paired with Casey Daniels in 2022.
In the latest Barrett News Media Top 20, Kendall & Casey was named the 9th best Mid-Market Midday Show.
Earlier in the week, news broke that the Denver Broncos were benching veteran quarterback Russell Wilson, who is reportedly expecting to be cut by the team in March. The decision comes just one year after he agreed to a five-year contract extension worth a reported $245 million and while the team is still alive in the quest to qualify for the NFL postseason, although their chances are rather slim.
NFL on FOX analyst and Denver Sports 104.3 radio host Mark Schlereth played for the team for six seasons where he won two Super Bowl championships in the process. He recently joined Colin Cowherd on The Herd to discuss what was going on when the news broke, taking place live on the air towards the end of their morning show, Schlereth and Evans.
“Two minutes before I was like, ‘Based on the contract situation and based on the production versus what he costs, there’s no way you can go forward with Russell Wilson being your quarterback next year,’” Schlereth recalled. “It was interesting because you can sit there and talk about all the things he has done and all the things he’s done in the past, but right now what you’re paying him versus the production that you’re getting – those two things don’t match up; they don’t align.”
Mark Schlereth continued by outlining how the conversation on Wilson was the primary conversation during that segment of the program. Although the team is contextualizing the move as a football decision, it could ultimately end up saving them $37 million.
Wilson’s contract extension begins next season and it contains significant penalties related to dead money should the organization decide to move on from the quarterback. Jarred Stidham will be starting at the position for the team for Sunday’s New Year’s Eve tilt against the Los Angeles Chargers set to kick off at 4:25 p.m. EST/1:25 p.m. PST.
“Interestingly enough, then the news breaks,” Schlereth said, “and that’s one of those things as you and I talk about; man that’s Manna from Heaven right there; that’s radio gold.”
94WIP afternoon host Jon Marks raised eyebrows around the industry earlier this month when he announced he was exiting the timeslot he shared with Ike Reese. He has now expounded upon his reasoning.
During an interview with Crossing Broad, Marks revealed that he has known since late 2022 that he would be departing the Philadelphia sports station.
“I’ve known this was coming for a year. We tried to work things out and they (WIP management) were very respectful of the way I felt about everything… There’s the children thing, there’s the quality of life thing, and there’s the financial thing,” said Marks. “And the financial thing was third. But it’s still a part of it, right? People will say ‘Either it’s about your family or it’s not,’ but it also gets to a financial point where you say, ‘I can’t say no to that for my family.’
“I can’t say no to that. It can pay for my kids’ college, or I can buy a shore house to where I can spend more time and commute from the shore in the summer. There are ways you can get around it that help your quality of life when you’re still doing the same thing that maybe you hate. More vacation, more money, things like that.”
Jon Marks also noted the precarious financial situation that Audacy — parent company of 94WIP — is in played a role in his departure.
“The company that owns WIP — Audacy — is $1.9 billion in debt. Now, how do you get out of debt? Well, you have to pay off your debt. So next year they owe $400-$500 million in debt service. They’re losing money on a quarterly basis. So when your business loses money, how do you pay off half a billion dollars of debt coming up? You lay people off, you cut costs, and even then it’s not doing anything. They’re going to have to declare for bankruptcy. It’s a matter of when, not if they do it.
“After Angelo was gone, they said ‘Hey we’re not paying people Angelo money anymore, we’re not paying people Howard money, we’re not paying people Anthony Gargano money.’ (It was) ‘this is what we’re willing to offer you.”
The NFL may have officially usurped the NBA for Christmas Day, as a game posted yet another massive ratings number. FOX Sports’ 4:25 PM ET matchup between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles received 29 million viewers, with a peak of 31.67 million viewers as the game neared its dramatic conclusion.
Christmas Day with the @NFLonFOX sleighs with 29,021,000 viewers ????
The #NFCEast showdown between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants gifted double digit gains over last year's comparable holiday window. pic.twitter.com/LYt9jkJPpM
The game was FOX’s most-watched Christmas Day telecast of any kind and marked a 29 percent increase compared to last year’s matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and Denver Broncos. The nature of this year’s game may have helped, as not only was it a matchup between NFC East rivals, but the game was close until the final whistle, while last year’s game was a blowout decided by the end of the first half.
If you’re keeping score at home, the three NFL games on Christmas Day drew viewership totals of 29.2 million for the Raiders and Chiefs, 29 million for Giants/Eagles, and 27.2 million for the Monday Night Football matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers. According to figures provided by Front Office Sports, the five NBA games combined garnered 14.1 million viewers, meaning the “least-watched” NFL matchup from Monday nearly doubled the total of every single NBA game.
