NFL the way it USED to be

watching some of the videos in butters' piece about chester mcglockton made me think, man, the presentation of the NFL on sundays has come a long way over the years. my first football memories definitely involved pat and john on NFC games on CBS, and paul maguire doing nfl games on NBC (and later he worked with joe theismann and mike patrick on sunday night football on espn). i don't remember much about monday night football growing up because it was usually way too late for me to stay up and watch the whole game, but i do remember a combination of al michaels, frank gifford, and dan dierdorf. well, commenting about the old broadcast teams isn't what i wanted to write about.

i wanted to comment on the 80 minute gap between the late pm and sunday night games. it used to be that espn would present the sunday night games, and would have the NFL highlight show all to themselves in the lead-up to SNF. chris berman was MADE for NFL primetime, and tom jackson would provide insightful comments during the highlights. there wasn't much bull from what i remember, just the meat and potatoes of every game that happened at 1 and 4 EST. it was appointment viewing for me every sunday night during the football season at college.

with NBC buying SNF, i guess the NFL awarded NBC its own exclusive highlight show, so now we have the pretentious football night in america pregame show. the presentation of the day's games just don't seem as slick or well narrated like what chris and tom did. i also feel like there are just too many people on the set. in the show's first year, nbc had jerome bettis, cris collinsworth, bob costas, peter king, and sterling sharpe. do you really need that many voices for an 80 minute show? jeebus!

it's a comfort still to watch chris berman and tom jackson do their own highlights in the blitz on sunday night sportscenters, but you never know when the two are on because they are intertwined with the rest of sportscenter for the 11pm edition. i want them to go back to doing primetime at 730pm. how i miss those days.