NAHSTE
New member
http://deadspin.com/191242/here-are-those-tirico-stories-we-hinted-at-last-week
I was on a sports talk radio show here in DC last week when Mike Tirico came on for an interview and to preview the upcoming Monday Night game between the Skins and Cowboys. And while I was tempted to ask Tirico about throwing women on tables and fucking their brains out, common courtesy got the best of me and I instead asked him if Jon Gruden ever got shit for saying THIS GUY in the MNF booth all the time. You can listen to his reply here, but I transcribed most of it below for your reading pleasure:
I hear it and see it a bunch. I think people who say it all the time are LAZY because they miss the fact that Jon kicks the butt of every other analyst on TV with what he's able to bring to the table. He sees more in game and is more current and is more ahead of the game than anybody... When people get into the whole, "Hey, how often does Jon say THIS GUY or THAT GUY..." they're sloppy and they're lazy. Cause if they sit and watch... Jon has so much more of a clue of what's going on within a football game as it's happening...
Now, Gruden is Tirico's boothmate and it makes perfect sense for him to vehemently defend his colleague to a lazy, snarkifying basement-dweller such as myself. Gruden DOES know more about football than you and I do. I heard him call the game Monday Night and indeed, Gruden and Jaws knew all kinds of crazy shit. They offered far more football insight than you or I could probably ever come up with while watching a game.
And I still hated listening to them anyway.
I really did. I tried to give them an honest shot, but no. They're horrid. And if my football ignorance is to blame for it, so be it. All I know is that by the end of the game, Jaws and Gruden were talking about Tony Romo as if he shits unicorns and rides around in the sky on a giant floating rose petal, and I wanted to kill myself.
You can be extremely well-prepared and extremely knowledgeable at your job, but this is a free country which means I'm still free to strongly dislike your work. It's the same with books and movies and anything else. Just because you worked on something REAL HARD doesn't mean people aren't allowed to think it's dogshit. I'm sure it took Paul Thomas Anderson months, even years, to shape the screenplay for Magnolia. That doesn't mean I'm not allowed to want to burn every photo negative of that god-awful piece of shit and rid it from the face of the Earth. And I know Les Stroud fans think he could kick Bear Grylls's ass. But Bear Grylls's show is wayyyy more fun to watch than Survivorman, mainly because Bear is so rugged and because I'd like him to adopt me and teach me to use a flint.
The ESPN mentality has long been that you, the viewer, don't know what's best for you. If you have a problem with the likes of Jaws and Gruden, well then that's YOUR problem and not theirs. It's what Cosell used to talk about when he referred to the jockocracy. If you think a former athlete or coach is annoying you on TV, that's because you were never part of the game like they were so you are WRONG. You are a fundamentally flawed person for not appreciating what they bring to the table, for the years and years of work they put into their sport before bestowing their insight upon you, the little people. Take our dogshit and eat it.
But that's wrong. Good television establishes a relationship between the person on camera and the viewer watching at home. It's about forging a bond, and it's hard to forge that bond when HOLY SHIT COULD SOMEONE PLEASE GET JAWS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR FIVE MINUTES? All the insight that Jaws and Gruden have to offer me gets lost in the shuffle because they won't stop offering it. It's like I'm being bukkake'd with information. You have to make the information you present palatable. You have to edit. You have to make the viewer WANT to listen to what you have to say.
And Jaws and Gruden don't do that. Jaws, in particular, grates because he remains committed to delivering analysis like he's giving some kind of political stump speech. "And with a quarterback like TONY ROMO, you can bet the Dallas Cowboys are going to go far! VOTE ROMO!" What the fuck is that? Why can't you just talk? Everything feels so canned. So strained. There's no time to breathe during an MNF telecast. Jaws and Gruden just talk and talk and talk and talk and it eventually all becomes static. And they goad each other on. When one starts talking loudly, the other starts talking LOUDER, until EVERYONE IS SHOUTING LOUD NOISES LOUD NOISES PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!
Both men stand in stark contrast to Tirico himself, who's very low-key and raises his voice only when genuinely excited or pissed by something he sees on the field (or when asked stupid questions by people on the radio). Jaws and Gruden are so excited all of the time, I don't even know what the fuck I'm watching by the end. I guess Tony Romo had a heroic performance Monday night, but why the fuck did he throw the ball up for grabs in the third quarter like an asshole? Don't tell me that was all the receiver's fault, because no sensible QB should have that much faith in Kevin freakin' Ogletree. It's like a dog barking at the dinner table. I just get worn down.
And I think both men COULD be enjoyable analysts, if they just dialed shit back a little bit. But this is the home of Chris Berman, so everyone at ESPN is encouraged to constantly push and push, as if they're trying to sell me a game I'm already watching. So I don't get any nuance from the MNF booth. All I get are THIS GUYS and NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUES and all that other shit that I don't need. So yes, I am sloppy and lazy. That's pretty much an exact description of the entire NFL-viewing demographic. But it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily wrong to not like what I'm hearing. After all, we're the viewers. We're the ones who have to watch this shit.
