Our disdain for the Mike Patrick-Joe Theismann-Paul Maguire ESPN broadcast troika is well-known. We began to chronicle it last year, with our stories on “
Grant’s enormous sack” and “
ESPN’s verbal reach around.”
Put most simply, these guys compose the worst big-time crew in the history of sports broadcasting. We’re shocked, and saddened, each and every season when we turn on the first ESPN nighttime broadcast and find them right back there in the same old place, offering us all the insight of a New England Patriots injury report.
It’s too bad. Theismann has been a household name since 1970, when he quarterbacked Notre Dame and finished second in the Heisman voting to Stanford’s Jim Plunkett. After three years in the CFL, he fought for a job in the NFL by returning punts in Washington, D.C. Gotta give the man credit for that. Soon, he was handed control of the offense. He guided the Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XVII and won the league MVP award the following season by leading what was, to that point, the highest-scoring offense in NFL history (541 points; 33.8 PPG).
Sure, Maguire is a Buffalo homer, but he built a strong legacy for himself in pro football as one of just a handful of players who stuck with the old AFL for every season of its existence (1960-69). He was a linebacker and punter with the Bills, after twice leading the nation in TD receptions as a tight end at The Citadel.
But as these two ex-players prove, proficiency on the field has nothing to do with ability in the booth. (Theismann, by the way, will join Al Michaels next season when Monday Night Football moves to ESPN.)
Patrick, meanwhile, is the spackle that holds up the walls of a broadcast booth that ESPN needs to condemn before any more children are hurt by the gaseous emissions of ignorance pouring from the stink-pipe pieholes of its color commentators. He’s a solid play-by-play man – we’ve long admired his work in the college game – but he’s hampered by hosts who have a passion for hyperbole tempered only by a flair for the obvious.
