Bryant Gumbel Out As Play-By-Play Voice For NFLN

Good Riddance, Bryant.  Dont' let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.  Now if they just get rid of that moron Chris Collinsworth and start with some new faces, maybe the NFLN will have a chance to do well with thier live games.

But you had to mute them.

Next were Fox and CBS who haven't changed their style in years, and have an all around solid package, especially their top games where they get lots of multiple camera angles.

Absolute worst (of course) was ESPN, with their constantly shifting cameras, dramatic 'overhead' spinning looks, and zooming in on the fog coming out of the center's mouth.  When he was on the sideline.  In a cast.  Awful.

Depending on who NFLN gets into the booth, Thursday night might just have more staying power than Monday night football, since they seem to be focusing on having a solid, football-centric spectacle, rather than the multi-billion dollar 'something for everyone" spectacle that ESPN harbors...

Writing-wise, John Clayton is always solid, and I've liked what I've seen out of Mike Sando.  Jeffri Chadiha, Matt (I forgot I'm not a Cowboys beat writer anymore) Mosley, Pat Yasinskas, Bill Williamson, and all the rest of the columnists wouldn't crack the Top 20 smartest football people at MHR, and they get paid for the crap that they write.  Len Pasquarelli is the worst in the whole industry, with his axe-grinding on behalf of friendly agents who feed him inside information.  It's not even so much the fact that he loathes Mike Shanahan that bothers me, it's just his complete lack of objectivity as a writer.

Worse than the booth crew and the football writers are the studio crews.  I present you the entire list of ESPN football studio commentators whose thoughts have value of any kind:  Tom Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Mark Schlereth, and Steve Young.  Chris Berman thinks the league is about him at this point.  I actually complained in writing to the NFL that it was a travesty that they let this clown do his schtick as the MC of the Hall of Fame induction ceremony.  It was just appalling.  Stuart Scott may as well be Berman, Junior.  The rest of them are too bad to mention.  I wouldn't want their reputations to get "debacled" on my account.

I actually do find a good deal of value in the Draft analysis of both Mel Kiper and Todd McShay, so ESPN has that going for it.  Particularly Kiper deserves credit for enduring all the xenophobic criticism from NFL people over the years, and really, his analysis mostly stands the test of time.  A lot of GMs would like to have his record, strange as that may seem.

If ESPN used its massive collection of resources to do more analyzing of the game and presentation of that analysis, things would be great for real fans.  Instead, they try to get more women to watch the game by subjecting real football fans to irrelevant, sideshow crap.  For a network that blew up on smart marketing, ESPN has gotten really bad at it over the years, and they should remember that the most important of the 4 P's is Product.  The Product is football, and no other lame attempts at spectacle need be brought forth in its presence.