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[size=+1]NFL Network Spices Up Fourth Of July[/size]
July 3, 2005, 4:37 PM (CDT) IRVING, Texas - For a football fan, these are the dog days.
The heat goes up and the pace slows down. Small children bounce around all day, under the stay-at-home parent's foot. Teenagers sleep till noon. Football teams are on vacation. Mini-camps are over and there's still a month until training camps open.
You need a fix. The NFL Network is here to help.
As the nation celebrates its birthday and baseball fans are sniffing out pennant races, the NFL Network interrupts its nightly offerings of 2004 Bengals and Saints highlights for an Independence Day chat with three NFL play-by-play radio voices, talking about the relationship between "voice" and fans, the art of the business and more.
Two of the three panelists interviewed by anchor Rich Eisen have hair the same color it was when they were teenagers. Your humble correspondent, sporting snow on the roof, was the third.
The special will run on the NFL Network on its nightly Total Access program on the Fourth of July (6 p.m. CDT). The show repeats at 8 p.m. and again overnight and the next morning (check your local listings, as the promos say).
There was to have been a fourth panelist, but as luck would have it, on the day we were assembled at the NFL Network studio in Los Angeles, Myron Cope announced his retirement after 35 years as color analyst for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That gave me, Greg Papa of the Raiders and Mike Keith of the Tennessee Titans a chance to do an extra segment to talk about Myron. That segment aired June 21.
This business of broadcasting NFL games for local audiences on the radio has changed drastically since Cope, an accomplished writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper and Sports Illustrated, and the author of several books, was invited into the booth. In those days (six years before I started doing the same job with Verne Lundquist on the Cowboys Network), there was a play-by-play announcer and a color man. Myron was every bit of that.
Now, there's an analyst, a job my partner Babe Laufenberg performs better than anyone in the country (in my opinion, and it's my column). Back then, the color man might know enough football to provide some real analysis, but it was OK if he was just colorful.
Myron did both, but in a way that can only be under-described as unique. He wouldn't get hired today, and maybe modern audiences are better served. But you'd be hard pressed to get any real Steelers fans of the last 35 years to tell you Myron Cope didn't enrich their lives. Myron retired for health reasons at age 76, but if he ever wants to tell stories and comment on the current product, I want to be there to listen.
The July 4th special was the brainchild of NFL Network producer Drew Ohlmeyer. What was he thinking?
"July 4th is a uniquely American holiday," he says, "and we think what you guys do, relating to your audiences and representing the teams, is uniquely American. We thought it was a great chance to give a cross-section of team voices some exposure to the national audience beyond the NFL Films highlight clips.
"We wanted to cross the generations in doing this, so we had Mike Keith, a Tennessee product who's still relatively young in his career in his sixth year. Greg Papa is a little more established in his 10th year calling the Raiders."
Then they needed a geezer. They could have picked the only two guys who have been at it longer than my 27 years this season, Gil Santos in New England and Merrill Reese in Philadelphia. But they picked me, probably because I look older than the other two. I think I am older than Reese, but apparently I qualify as an industry geriatric who is still able to sit up and take nourishment under his own power.
Ohlmeyer thought the show "went great," although we - especially me - were a little wordy (what a shock to Cowboys fans, huh?). But that's why God created editors.
I don't want to give away too much, but you'll hear clips of every NFL team's radio voice. You'll hear Mike Keith discuss his excellent call of the Music City Miracle play against Buffalo, and you'll hear me explain why I hate my call of Emmitt Smith's NFL rushing record-breaking carry against Seattle. You'll also hear a pretty lively chat about the late Howard Cosell (Greg Papa thinks he's the greatest sportscaster ever; I respected his intellect but wasn't a fan, and a comprehensive piece about the Great Man shows why).
By the way, the NFL Network continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In fact, Ohlmeyer says that growth is "unprecedented," and that "no other network has been in 25 million homes faster than we have. Not ESPN or anyone else. And it will only get bigger."
He didn't have much to say on the record about the conflict, as some see it, between the Network and the Cowboys Channel, but he did say every team will get an hour each Saturday this fall to, in effect, take over the Network and show the country what it's got.
For one hour on the 4th of July, they're turning it over to three of the luckiest men in America. It was fun to do. I hope it's fun for you to watch. At least it'll give you something to carry you over until Jerry Jones' Special Edition kicks off its new season on July 23, and camp starts a week later.
Until then, enjoy those pennant races.
July 3, 2005, 4:37 PM (CDT) IRVING, Texas - For a football fan, these are the dog days.
The heat goes up and the pace slows down. Small children bounce around all day, under the stay-at-home parent's foot. Teenagers sleep till noon. Football teams are on vacation. Mini-camps are over and there's still a month until training camps open.
You need a fix. The NFL Network is here to help.
As the nation celebrates its birthday and baseball fans are sniffing out pennant races, the NFL Network interrupts its nightly offerings of 2004 Bengals and Saints highlights for an Independence Day chat with three NFL play-by-play radio voices, talking about the relationship between "voice" and fans, the art of the business and more.
Two of the three panelists interviewed by anchor Rich Eisen have hair the same color it was when they were teenagers. Your humble correspondent, sporting snow on the roof, was the third.
The special will run on the NFL Network on its nightly Total Access program on the Fourth of July (6 p.m. CDT). The show repeats at 8 p.m. and again overnight and the next morning (check your local listings, as the promos say).
There was to have been a fourth panelist, but as luck would have it, on the day we were assembled at the NFL Network studio in Los Angeles, Myron Cope announced his retirement after 35 years as color analyst for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That gave me, Greg Papa of the Raiders and Mike Keith of the Tennessee Titans a chance to do an extra segment to talk about Myron. That segment aired June 21.
This business of broadcasting NFL games for local audiences on the radio has changed drastically since Cope, an accomplished writer for a Pittsburgh newspaper and Sports Illustrated, and the author of several books, was invited into the booth. In those days (six years before I started doing the same job with Verne Lundquist on the Cowboys Network), there was a play-by-play announcer and a color man. Myron was every bit of that.
Now, there's an analyst, a job my partner Babe Laufenberg performs better than anyone in the country (in my opinion, and it's my column). Back then, the color man might know enough football to provide some real analysis, but it was OK if he was just colorful.
Myron did both, but in a way that can only be under-described as unique. He wouldn't get hired today, and maybe modern audiences are better served. But you'd be hard pressed to get any real Steelers fans of the last 35 years to tell you Myron Cope didn't enrich their lives. Myron retired for health reasons at age 76, but if he ever wants to tell stories and comment on the current product, I want to be there to listen.
The July 4th special was the brainchild of NFL Network producer Drew Ohlmeyer. What was he thinking?
"July 4th is a uniquely American holiday," he says, "and we think what you guys do, relating to your audiences and representing the teams, is uniquely American. We thought it was a great chance to give a cross-section of team voices some exposure to the national audience beyond the NFL Films highlight clips.
"We wanted to cross the generations in doing this, so we had Mike Keith, a Tennessee product who's still relatively young in his career in his sixth year. Greg Papa is a little more established in his 10th year calling the Raiders."
Then they needed a geezer. They could have picked the only two guys who have been at it longer than my 27 years this season, Gil Santos in New England and Merrill Reese in Philadelphia. But they picked me, probably because I look older than the other two. I think I am older than Reese, but apparently I qualify as an industry geriatric who is still able to sit up and take nourishment under his own power.
Ohlmeyer thought the show "went great," although we - especially me - were a little wordy (what a shock to Cowboys fans, huh?). But that's why God created editors.
I don't want to give away too much, but you'll hear clips of every NFL team's radio voice. You'll hear Mike Keith discuss his excellent call of the Music City Miracle play against Buffalo, and you'll hear me explain why I hate my call of Emmitt Smith's NFL rushing record-breaking carry against Seattle. You'll also hear a pretty lively chat about the late Howard Cosell (Greg Papa thinks he's the greatest sportscaster ever; I respected his intellect but wasn't a fan, and a comprehensive piece about the Great Man shows why).
By the way, the NFL Network continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In fact, Ohlmeyer says that growth is "unprecedented," and that "no other network has been in 25 million homes faster than we have. Not ESPN or anyone else. And it will only get bigger."
He didn't have much to say on the record about the conflict, as some see it, between the Network and the Cowboys Channel, but he did say every team will get an hour each Saturday this fall to, in effect, take over the Network and show the country what it's got.
For one hour on the 4th of July, they're turning it over to three of the luckiest men in America. It was fun to do. I hope it's fun for you to watch. At least it'll give you something to carry you over until Jerry Jones' Special Edition kicks off its new season on July 23, and camp starts a week later.
Until then, enjoy those pennant races.