Sports on the Air: NFL Network has uneven game lineup
Published: November 20, 2009, 10:32 pm
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The NFL Network schedule of games isn't exactly an advertisement for pressuring Time Warner to carry the channel. The Thanksgiving night matchup between the New York Giants and Denver Broncos is decent but not as attractive as it was a few weeks ago. Then it is the Bills-Jets in Toronto on Dec. 3 and the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers at the hopeless Cleveland Browns on Dec. 10.
The network's best game looks like Dallas against the unbeaten New Orleans Saints on Saturday, Dec. 19. The finale between San Diego and Tennessee is on Christmas night.
• ESPN officials certainly would be shocked if Jon Gruden became a candidate for the Bills job after signing him to a multiyear deal. ESPN Executive Vice President Norby Williamson told Sports Illustrated that he expects Gruden will be there at least until 2011. Gruden also has told SI he won't coach next year and might not in 2011.
I've been a Gruden fan since his first preseason game on Monday Night Football. He will be adding the NFL draft and Super Bowl week roles to his duties and call the 2010 Rose Bowl and BCS Title Game on ESPN Radio with Mike Tirico.
In an interview before the season, Gruden didn't sound like he was itching to get back into coaching. He was enjoying family life in Tampa and watching one of his three sons play high school football.
• Buffalo Bills fans haven't seen enough of top draft choice Aaron Maybin on the field, but some Channel 2 viewers believe they have seen more than enough.
Several days ago, the station was interviewing Terrell Owens in the locker room and inadvertently aired a shot of a naked player from behind. Channel 2 and Bills officials declined to say who the player was, but many viewers thought it was Maybin. If it was Maybin, that's the most we've seen of him all year.
• Inquiring minds want to know: What is up with Channel 4's HD coverage of Bills games? A station engineer wrote to a reader that the bandwidth "is being starved" at times on CBS feeds.
• ESPN college basketball analyst Bob Knight was singing the praises of Syracuse on Thursday night in its romp over California. He even said, "I don't think losing [Jonny] Flynn will be a bit of difference to this team." The Niagara Falls product left Syracuse for the NBA.
• How many times have fans said they wish coaches would try to win games rather than play not to lose?
Think about that the next time … if there is a next time … a coach makes a gutsy decision like New England's Bill Belichick, who went for it on fourth-and-2 on his own 28-yard line late in the Indianapolis game with a six-point lead.
I liked the call, thinking that the Pats would lose anyway if they kicked to Indy and its quarterback, Peyton Manning.
NBC's Cris Collinsworth immediately criticized Belichick and ex-Patriot Rodney Harrison piled on in the postgame show after the play failed and Manning drove the Colts to a winning touchdown on the short field. That's playing results.
Since game night, math majors who explained the odds were in Belichick's favor and some former coaches turned analysts have said they understood the gamble even if they wouldn't have taken it themselves. The topic is surely to be debated on this Sunday's pregame shows.
• Junior Seau, who is back on the Patriots, has a new show on Versus, "Sports Jobs With Junior Seau." It officially kicks off with two episodes at 10 p.m. Dec. 2. In the 10 half-hour episodes, Seau tries out various jobs in sports.
The jobs include major league bat boy, a horse trainer, part of a stadium construction crew, equipment manager for the Washington Capitals, an Indy Car pit crew member, a college football writer for Sports Illustrated, a golf caddie on the LPGA Tour, a member of an arena conversion crew and a bullfighter at a Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event.
Clearly, NFL announcer doesn't qualify.
In the Jan. 20 horse training episode, a Versus release said that "Seau will feed, groom, shoe, clean and care for racehorses, and then do the dirtiest job he's done yet … castrate a live horse."
Sounds like must-see TV.
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