Lost amidst all the Dennis Miller hoo-hah was this little factoid: ABC decided to insert yet another comedian into the Monday Night Football booth.
Did you catch Dan Fouts in "The Waterboy"?
Funnier than Bill Cowher and Jimmy Johnson, he was.
He acted the part of the booth straight man in the Disney spoof that starred too much of its ABC and ESPN talent -- I mean, Dick Vitale in a college football movie? Fouts, in his role as a bowl-game banalyst, kept repeating the same inanity until sidekick Brent Musburger let him have it. It was hardly the stuff of Academy Awards, but it was indeed Foutsian.
So long as the television network lets Dan be Dan, this new-fashioned Monday Night Football show will work out. That isn't me talking. That comes from a Fox Sports Net college football studio analyst who caught a lot of passes from Fouts: former San Diego Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow.
"Let him be Dan, you know," Winslow said. "Don't try to make him something he's not. He's got a great personality, a witty sense of humor. He's not going to be Howard Cosell. He's not going to be Frank Gifford. He's Dan Fouts. Let him be Dan."
Fouts doesn't need to crack wise. Fouts doesn't need to get windy, for no other reason than their probably won't exist much airtime between Miller and Al Michaels. All Fouts needs do is talk football, steer the broadcast back to its intended mission, stay the course.
The new former-quarterback-as-color-commentator isn't as personable as the old one, Boomer Esiason, who displayed his wit and verve everywhere but in the Monday Night Football booth. Fouts isn't as personable as Dandy Don Meredith or Alex Karras or maybe even Dan Dierdorf (though he's a sight better than Fred Williamson). Going by the assessment of San Diego media who interviewed him, Fouts was a rather unelectrifying bolt. Yet he can handle ABC's needs here. This booth needs steadying, not further rocking. It needs a straight man.
The son of former 49ers broadcaster Bob Fouts already owns a much deeper TV portfolio than Esiason. He worked in San Diego while still doing traffic control for Air Coryell. He worked CBS's NFC coverage for a few seasons before that network lost those rights. He worked ABC's college football broadcasts since 1994, toiling alongside Musburger and, last season, legendary semiretiree Keith Jackson.
Yeah, this is quite a promotion from the Saturday afternoon second or third team. But everybody else was still under contract elsewhere: Terry Bradshaw and John Madden at Fox, Mike Ditka at CBS ...
Just let Al be Al and Dennis be Dennis and ... well, you know.
"He'll bring some entertainment to the booth, he'll bring a great deal of information," Winslow said. "I'm sure he'll be more prepared than many of his predecessors. And he's been doing it for a while; he isn't coming straight out of football. Not to knock anybody, but we've seen that sometimes doesn't work.
"Dan is the kind of guy who will give us more than just the quarterback's perspective. I hope they allow him to do that, and ... not just ask him a quarterback's question. He's comfortable, he's credible and he's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Come on.
"But thank God they didn't hire Rush Limbaugh. That would've been my last Monday Night Football."
Program notes
Across the state, the Flyers are being Big Brother to their game broadcaster, Philadelphia all-sports radio station WIP-AM, where host Mike Missanelli received a two-day suspension for criticizing the team's management. It's chilling not only that the Flyers and NBA 76ers inserted clauses into the station's rights contracts prohibiting "personal attacks" on them, their players and management, but that a journalistic critique was deemed to fall under that category.
Equally chilling is the Braves' attempt to kick their broadcasters off the team charter for a similarly heinous act of journalism: Showing on TV how the club was, shall we say, apparently fiddling with the catcher's box rules. Yesterday, the Atlanta front office decided better and lifted the charter ban. Somebody must've figured out it would cost the Ted Turner-Time-Warner company more for the broadcasters to fly commercial.
One riotous Lakers fan called a Los Angeles radio show last week to explain about the vandalizing celebration: "Even Howard Stern would have totally approved." Reinforces your faith in humankind and radio, doesn't it?
Go ahead and award the Distasteful Quote of the Century to Mike Tyson: "I will eat [Lennox Lewis'] children." Even cannibals were offended.
John "Takin' the 7 Train" Rocker and his Shea Stadium return are on Fox Sports Net tonight.
Pity ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap. Last weekend, he covered Tyson. This weekend, he covers Rocker. Somebody at the network doesn't like that man.
For some reason, I only envision a bad public relations ending for this Doug the Camel thing: After a stunning Pirates finish, the humpback becomes a national celebrity. Next thing anybody knows, he's strolling through Death Valley in the off-season with a Sports Illustrated reporter. And that's when he lets loose how he despises walking the streets of New York next to all the French Poodles, pregnant pigeons and HOV-squashed vermin.
You can reach Chuck Finder at cfinder@post-gazette.com
More of The Big Picture
