HBO MAX has a new documentary: \u201cMiller Night Football.\u201d It\u2019s about Dennis Miller\u2019s two years (2000-01) as color analyst on \u201cMonday Night Football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from Howard Cosell\u2019s reign of terror (1970-83) during MNF\u2019s glory days, Miller\u2019s tenure was the franchise\u2019s high point.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re smart and creative, that is.<\/p>\n
Therein lied the problem.<\/p>\n
Miller, a Pittsburgh native and ex-commissioner of the air-hockey league at Point Park University, is a football fan.<\/p>\n
Not a football lifer.<\/p>\n
An incredibly witty and erudite comedian who hosted the \u201cWeekend Update\u201d news segment on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d Also \u201cDennis Miller Live\u201d on HBO.<\/p>\n
His addition to MNF\u2019s booth was a curveball designed to shock the system, and it worked.<\/p>\n
Miller was insightful in a way ex-jocks could never verbalize. If his football expertise wasn\u2019t great, it was good enough. His references and analogies were gold.<\/p>\n
To wit: \u201cThe ref is whipping out that flag like it\u2019s the only lighter at a crack house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al Michaels, Dan Fouts and Miller were the MNF booth I wanted.<\/p>\n
Michaels is the gold standard on play-by-play.<\/p>\n
When it comes to bleating former players, Fouts was better than most.<\/p>\n
The three of them worked together. The whole was greater than the sum of the parts.<\/p>\n
It was never meant to last, and it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
John Madden left FOX to come to ABC and join MNF, replacing both Fouts and Miller alongside Michaels.<\/p>\n
I saw Madden as more bloviating clown than legend. Give me an articulate comedian over a babbling football lifer.<\/p>\n
But Madden was far superior to the parade of ex-jocks currently cluttering the sports airwaves, and not just the broadcast booths.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to get off on a rant here, but these days sports networks specialize in selling stupid to the stupid, the dumber the better, and it gets dumber every day.<\/p>\n
No point listing the guilty, because they already get too much oxygen. But the more stupid, the more successful.<\/p>\n
Because that\u2019s where America is at. The war against intellectualism goes worryingly beyond sports media.<\/p>\n
MNF isn\u2019t special anymore.<\/p>\n
Too many football games on TV.<\/p>\n
MNF used to be the NFL\u2019s weekly crown jewel, the only place you could see the previous day\u2019s highlights.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s just another telecast.<\/p>\n
Highbrow columnist Tony Kornheiser was a second attempt to put something different in MNF\u2019s booth from 2006-08. I liked it, but Kornheiser had to deal with on-mic opposition, namely Mike Tirico on play-by-play no-selling Kornheiser\u2019s wit and freezing him out. Miller had no such problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cPardon the Interruption,\u201d the show hosted by Kornheiser and the equally intelligent Michael Wilbon, is the best program on ESPN and all of sports TV. But it\u2019s spawned too many idiot illegitimate kids.<\/p>\n
As Wilbon recently lamented, ESPN doesn\u2019t promote PTI: \u201cYou\u2019ll never hear a mention of this show.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because it\u2019s not dumb for dummies.<\/p>\n
I loved Miller on MNF.<\/p>\n
But then, I\u2019m a sports guy whose biggest inspiration as a kid was \u201cNational Lampoon\u201d magazine.<\/p>\n
MNF has alternate versions now.<\/p>\n
But the Manning brothers alt-cast isn\u2019t funny.<\/p>\n
The Pat McAfee alt-cast won\u2019t be funny.<\/p>\n
No matter. Those guys laugh uproariously at their own jokes. The dolts watching laugh at the laugh.<\/p>\n
Miller was funny.<\/p>\n
Still is.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d love to see Miller make an NFL comeback.<\/p>\n
Meantime, today\u2019s football broadcasts have more holes in them than Ronnie Milsap and Jose Feliciano after a game of lawn darts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HBO MAX has a new documentary: \u201cMiller Night Football.\u201d It\u2019s about Dennis Miller\u2019s two years (2000-01) as color…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-870445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}