Be sure to check out this week's Score Atlanta, hitting Krogers, QuickTrips and Blockbusters tomorrow. But for a preview of Around the Dial, keep reading. Enjoy! Who loves ya Baby?
The Atlanta Falcons were given the royal treatment last weekend as Fox sent its No.1 broadcast team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to Foxborough to call the Falcons/Patriots game. The broadcast featured constant comparisons between Matt Ryan and Tom Brady to start the game and then chronicled Ryan’s return to the Boston area. Locally the AJC ran a similar story of Ryan’s “homecoming” and the Boston Globe ran a story on Sunday as well as Monday on the same topic. Ryan’s return could have gone better had the Falcons won, however the team came up just short. Adding insult to injury, at one point Falcons defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder was referred to as “Bob.”
ESPN’s coverage of the Tim Tebow injury was a bit much if you ask me. When the hit first occurred and watching Tebow’s head and neck snap forward, I thought that perhaps he was seriously hurt. (The fact that he was still in the game with a 31-7 lead, dropping back to pass deep in Kentucky territory is on Florida coach Urban Meyer) Tebow stayed on the field, motionless for a while, before being helped off of the field. Suddenly a camera was stationed on Tebow permanently and the camera caught the quarterback vomiting into a bag, which was shown on television, before he was taken from the field. ESPN decided to treat this as though it was the JFK assassination and followed the ambulance out of the parking lot. Tebow was seen inside of the flashing ambulance still in uniform, being attended to by EMTs. When did ESPN become TMZ? Chasing ambulances? REALLY ESPN? I didn’t realize you guys had THIS MUCH invested in him that you would give him the “Oh My Gosh the Pope is ill!” treatment. The ESPNU telecast of the Georgia/Arizona State game was interrupted to show the lowlights and later on ABC, Kirk Herbstreit received a text message about Tebow’s condition which he shared with the viewing audience of the Big 10 contest between Penn State and Iowa. ESPN’s SportsCenter was filled with Tebow updates and the ticker at the bottom of the screen constantly ran the news that Tebow had been injured and was rushed to the hospital. The network reported the next day Urban Meyer’s update that he spoke with Tebow and the Heisman trophy winner would be leaving the hospital Sunday night. Reports also noted that more than one dozen Gator fans stood outside of the hospital in the rain praying for Tebow, in a scene straight out of The Waterboy. I am not a Gator fan but anyone can see that this is a bit of overkill by the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Just a bit much. The saddest part of the entire matter is that Tebow’s “injury” overshadowed the biggest injury of the day: Baylor’s Robert Griffin. The Baylor QB will miss the rest of the season with a tear in his ACL and the Bears bowl hopes are likely dashed because of the injury. ESPN managed to discuss the injury only after discussing Tebow’s injury in great detail.
ESPN’s new Monday Night Football crew was in Dallas this past week and the broadcast was able to showcase the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in all of its grandeur. I guess I am impressed by the new stadium in the fact that it cost $1B to build, but anything that expensive should be impressive. I do like the new cast, especially Jon Gruden. Tony Kornheiser is great on PTI and I enjoyed reading his books featuring some of his old newspaper columns. I never quite got the feeling that he fit on MNF however. I thought he did a better job than the Dennis Miller experiment, but for whatever reason he gave off the fish-out-of-water vibe when I knew that wasn’t true. He knows sports and he knows football. Something though just wasn’t able to crossover in the telecasts. Perhaps it was his co-commentators. I would have liked to have seen him do a game with his Pardon the Interruption co-host Michael Wilbon. They could have done the game with a running commentary, sort of like how it would be if they were watching the game with you in your living room. We get Mike & Mike doing a game every now and then, why not PTI takes over a game just once?
No comments:
Post a Comment