Commentary
It isn’t that hard. Trip and I could call a game better than most of the guys getting paid to do it when we were in High School. It has been very common for us to pull some stat from out of nowhere about a particular team or player and then have the onair personalities get it from their stat guys via the headphones and then say it after we already did. We don’t need no stinking stat guys. We are the stat guys.
Plus we know which players are on which teams. We know their names (and if they are an obscure player, like “Rick” Romo, we can read the roster sheet properly). We know that Marion Barber is not the heart of the Packers’ offense. I suppose this list could go on and on. And it is only from last Thursday’s game between Dallas and Green Bay.
Yeah, Bryant Gumbel is terrible. I never thought I would say this, but I really think Dan Dierdorf is better than him. Heck, and know that it pains me to admit it, but I know that Joe Theismann is better than B.Gumby. I like Cris Collinsworth. But he needs a new partner and bad. Since I have been taught to limit my ridicule, I will leave off. But you know what I am talking about.
In a related note, don’t you think ESPN wishes they had kept Michael Irvin and not picked up Emmitt? Don’t get me wrong, I love Emmitt. He is a Cowboy. But he just doesn’t have the skill in front of the camera that Irvin does. Irvin has taken the time to have a good vocabulary and to know the proper use of said group of words. Poor Emmitt doesn’t. He uses terrible language (I don’t mean vulgar or anything, just wrong). How many times can he say something got “blowed up?”
To end on a positive note, I think he does a fine job on the commercials where he is choosing a Cranebill (or whatever the heck kind of flower it is). Perhaps he just needs a little more scripting and a lot less spontaneity. I do hate to say anything negative against such a great Cowboy - but know that it is said in love. Really.
