To Hell with the NFL
Tonight begins a new era in Monday Night Football with a pre-season game between the Oakland Raiders and the Minnesota Vikings. While the most obvious change would be the move from ABC to ESPN, the biggest change for me is the new announce team, particularly the debut of Tony Kornheiser.
Most sports fans know Kornheiser from his show on ESPN, Pardon the Interruption, which he co-hosts with Michael Wilbon. Since 2001, the two of them have entertained America with their insightful and humorous banter on the latest sport headlines. Last spring, Wilbon branched out from PTI and became part of ABC’s NBA pre-game shows. This fall, Kornheiser will get his chance to do a little moonlighting.
Back in February, ESPN announced their MNF announce team would consist of Mike Tirico, Joe Theismann, and Kornheiser. With the choice of Kornheiser, ESPN seems to be looking for the next Howard Cossell. Unfortunately for Kornheiser, trying to live up to the legend of Cossell can be a daunting task. Just ask Dennis Miller. Six years ago ABC surprised football fans when they hired Miller to announce games with Al Michaels and Dan Fouts. The experiment lasted only two years.
Will Kornheiser fare any better? It’s tough to say. Part of what makes PTI work so well is the chemistry he has with Wilbon. While Hornheiser seems like he’d be easy enough to work with, we won’t really know how he’ll mesh with Theismann and Tirico until the football season starts.
Another potential pitfall is that Tony arguably runs the show on PTI. He and Wilbon are equals, but Kornheiser is the driving force. He’s the one that puts on the silly costumes and makes the silly jokes and does the stupid penguin dance. On Monday Night Football, Tirico, as the play-by-play guy, will be running the show.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing their debut tonight and I’m excited that the real football season is only a few weeks away. However, this excitement is tainted with a lot of bitterness. This will be the twelfth football season without a professional football team in the City of Angels and frankly I’m getting a little perturbed.
Twelve years ago if you had told me that I’d have a better chance of watching an NFL game in person in Mexico City rather than in Los Angeles, I would have said you’re nuts. After all, LA had two football teams at the time (although the Rams actually played in Anaheim). But I would have been dead wrong as last October the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers faced off against each other in a in a packed Azteca Stadium for a regular season game. While it was cool to see over 100,000 exuberant Mexicans watching an NFL game, the event really underscored how ridiculous the situation has become.
When the Rams and Raiders left the LA area in 1995, I completely agreed with city leaders that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of financing new stadiums for fat cat NFL owners. I was even proud that my city wouldn’t bow down to the NFL. I also figured that NFL needed LA more than the city needed the NFL. I imagined that it would only be a few years before LA had another football team.
As the years passed I became aware that while the city really doesn’t need the NFL (since it still has the Lakers, Dodgers, UCLA, and USC), the NFL really doesn’t need LA either. As a matter of fact, the league has only grown in popularity and prosperity since it abandoned LA. Sure without LA you end up having the Super Bowl in cities like Jacksonville and Detroit, but I guess that’s a small price to pay.
But I continued hoping that LA would get a team again. In 1999 it seemed I would get my wish as the NFL was set to approve an expansion team. But once again, the issue of financing resulted in Los Angeles missing out and Houston ended up getting the new team instead.
Since then, LA has become the NFL boogey man. Whenever a football team wants a new stadium, it just has to mention the possibility of relocation to Los Angeles to get the local taxpayers in line and approval of public financing for that new stadium. Over the last few years I’ve heard rumblings about the Vikings, Colts, Chargers, and Cardinals moving to LA. But in every case, the team ended up getting what it wanted from their home cities and the rumblings ceased. My desperation for a new LA team has gotten so bad that I was actually hoping that Los Angeles would benefit from the misery of New Orleans and host the Saints last season after Hurricane Katrina.
Frankly I’m tired of it. Damn the NFL, damn them to hell. I don’t care if LA gets an NFL team or not. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop watching and I fully intend to watch MNF on ESPN tonight and I can’t wait for the regular season to start. Thankfully, even if Los Angeles doesn’t have a team, thanks to the good people at Yahoo! Fantasy Football, I have my own team and this year they’re the Defending Champs. God Bless the NFL.
Most sports fans know Kornheiser from his show on ESPN, Pardon the Interruption, which he co-hosts with Michael Wilbon. Since 2001, the two of them have entertained America with their insightful and humorous banter on the latest sport headlines. Last spring, Wilbon branched out from PTI and became part of ABC’s NBA pre-game shows. This fall, Kornheiser will get his chance to do a little moonlighting.
Back in February, ESPN announced their MNF announce team would consist of Mike Tirico, Joe Theismann, and Kornheiser. With the choice of Kornheiser, ESPN seems to be looking for the next Howard Cossell. Unfortunately for Kornheiser, trying to live up to the legend of Cossell can be a daunting task. Just ask Dennis Miller. Six years ago ABC surprised football fans when they hired Miller to announce games with Al Michaels and Dan Fouts. The experiment lasted only two years.
Will Kornheiser fare any better? It’s tough to say. Part of what makes PTI work so well is the chemistry he has with Wilbon. While Hornheiser seems like he’d be easy enough to work with, we won’t really know how he’ll mesh with Theismann and Tirico until the football season starts.
Another potential pitfall is that Tony arguably runs the show on PTI. He and Wilbon are equals, but Kornheiser is the driving force. He’s the one that puts on the silly costumes and makes the silly jokes and does the stupid penguin dance. On Monday Night Football, Tirico, as the play-by-play guy, will be running the show.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing their debut tonight and I’m excited that the real football season is only a few weeks away. However, this excitement is tainted with a lot of bitterness. This will be the twelfth football season without a professional football team in the City of Angels and frankly I’m getting a little perturbed.
Twelve years ago if you had told me that I’d have a better chance of watching an NFL game in person in Mexico City rather than in Los Angeles, I would have said you’re nuts. After all, LA had two football teams at the time (although the Rams actually played in Anaheim). But I would have been dead wrong as last October the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers faced off against each other in a in a packed Azteca Stadium for a regular season game. While it was cool to see over 100,000 exuberant Mexicans watching an NFL game, the event really underscored how ridiculous the situation has become.
When the Rams and Raiders left the LA area in 1995, I completely agreed with city leaders that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of financing new stadiums for fat cat NFL owners. I was even proud that my city wouldn’t bow down to the NFL. I also figured that NFL needed LA more than the city needed the NFL. I imagined that it would only be a few years before LA had another football team.
As the years passed I became aware that while the city really doesn’t need the NFL (since it still has the Lakers, Dodgers, UCLA, and USC), the NFL really doesn’t need LA either. As a matter of fact, the league has only grown in popularity and prosperity since it abandoned LA. Sure without LA you end up having the Super Bowl in cities like Jacksonville and Detroit, but I guess that’s a small price to pay.
But I continued hoping that LA would get a team again. In 1999 it seemed I would get my wish as the NFL was set to approve an expansion team. But once again, the issue of financing resulted in Los Angeles missing out and Houston ended up getting the new team instead.
Since then, LA has become the NFL boogey man. Whenever a football team wants a new stadium, it just has to mention the possibility of relocation to Los Angeles to get the local taxpayers in line and approval of public financing for that new stadium. Over the last few years I’ve heard rumblings about the Vikings, Colts, Chargers, and Cardinals moving to LA. But in every case, the team ended up getting what it wanted from their home cities and the rumblings ceased. My desperation for a new LA team has gotten so bad that I was actually hoping that Los Angeles would benefit from the misery of New Orleans and host the Saints last season after Hurricane Katrina.
Frankly I’m tired of it. Damn the NFL, damn them to hell. I don’t care if LA gets an NFL team or not. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop watching and I fully intend to watch MNF on ESPN tonight and I can’t wait for the regular season to start. Thankfully, even if Los Angeles doesn’t have a team, thanks to the good people at Yahoo! Fantasy Football, I have my own team and this year they’re the Defending Champs. God Bless the NFL.
posted by The Pocho at 12:04 PM
2 Comments:
I've been a Raiders fan for a while, and although I was sorry to see them go to Oakland 1) I was in Massachusetts when it happened, and so it made little difference to me then; 2) when I returned to LA after college, I was mostly happy that every single home game wasn't blacked out; and 3) now that I'm in Japan once again it matters very little where they are located. Some people would say the Raiders really don't matter period, an assessment with which I wouldn't necessarily disagree.
Anyway, LA definitely doesn't need the NFL -- studies have proven that teams rarely make a positive economic impact in their home cities and usually end up costing hundreds of millions. The NFL may not need LA, but blowing off the second largest market in the US in favor of the Carolinas and Nashvilles seems pretty shortsighted. Would Dell or Toyota say "we're doing pretty well, let's not sell our products in the LA area?" Seems unlikely.
If the Raiders were still in LA, I'd probably would follow them now. I didn't when they were here. That might have been part of the problem.
It's hard to tell how serious the NFL is about bringing back football to LA. Sometimes they seem really focused on it and then you don't hear anything about it for months.
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