Journalism Left Behind in Super Bowl Broadcast
By Len Shapiro
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, February 5, 2007; 1:38 PM
DAVIE, Fla. -- Give CBS broadcaster Boomer Esiason full credit. The former University of Maryland quarterback has never been shy about expressing an opinion going all the way back to when he registered for classes in College Park under his given name, Norman, so many years ago. The day after Super Bowl XLI, his prediction on Peyton Manning, uttered in the hours and minutes before the opening, electrifying kickoff, turned out just the way he said it would.
"There's a lot riding on this for both quarterbacks," Esiason said a few hours into Sunday's pre-game show. "If (Peyton Manning) loses this game, they'll say he choked in the big one. This is a defining moment for the great Peyton Manning. I think he'll be the MVP. I think he'll be patient early and he'll make plays. I think he'll hoist the trophy and be the most valuable player."
Obviously, Esiason hardly was going out on a fragile limb in anointing Manning the hero of the game before it had even started. It was a fairly safe observation on a day when CBS also took a safe and mostly sound approach to its entire Super Bowl production, from four-hour pre-game to four-hour game and post-game.
Many of the stories CBS told in the hours leading up to the game were rather predictable as well, and none of them exactly broke much new ground.
Chicago running back Thomas Jones spent all week telling reporters about growing up as the son of a coal-mining mother, for example. We've known for months that Bill Walsh has been battling leukemia, though at least it was comforting to hear his story and see that he clearly looks and sounds very much like a defiant survivor.
And Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Hines Ward's trip to South Korea last spring to learn about his own roots had also been the subject of numerous articles, including a brilliant piece in Sports Illustrated, over the last year. But CBS pushed golden girl Katie Couric to the forefront on this one, even if her only visible contribution seemed to be in providing a voice-over to the script. She didn¿t go to Korea, her producer did.
Couric did show up on the football set and was the object of much fawning from the pre-game crew, with Shannon Sharpe gushing, "Hey, I'm on TV with Katie Couric" and Esiason adding, " suddenly I'm feeling a little bit more important with her sitting here."
Hey, I sat in a CBS trailer watching it all on a big screen TV with Bob Schieffer over on the next couch eating pretzels and corn chips. No big deal, fellas, though Couric and Schieffer both could have served this mostly feel-good pre-game show far better by suggesting a much larger dollop of journalism be inserted into the mix. But sadly, CBS simply chose to ignore some of the biggest stories of the week in its Sunday coverage.
There was no mention, for example, of the growing number of retired NFL players furious at the league and their own union for what they perceive to be callous indifference to the plight of many of their less fortunate teammates who need better insurance and disability coverage and increased pensions.
One of the more heavily attended news conferences at the Super Bowl media center last week involved the announcement of an ongoing on-line auction organized by former Green Bay lineman Jerry Kramer. Many former players, including former Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka, have donated some of their most treasured memorabilia in an attempt to raise money for old players in dire need of help, which ought to be a major embarrassment to the league and the union.
Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end and coach of the only Bears Super Bowl champion, even made an emotional appeal Thursday at the news conference to both entities to do a better job in taking care of their own. So what if he's now employed by ESPN? Shouldn't CBS at least have sent a camera crew over to get Ditka on tape, or better yet, bring Da Coach on the set Sunday as one of the greatest Bears' icons in history and talk to him about the problem live on game day?
Three days before the big game, The N.Y. Times and Boston Globe also broke an important story on the health problems of former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson. Only 34 and a key man in three Patriots three Super Bowl victories this decade, Johnson was quoted as saying that Patriots coach Bill Belichick forced him to practice against medical advice a few days after he had sustained a concussion in a preseason game, and that he's been dealing with the consequences ever since.
After multiple concussions as a player, he said he now suffers from depression, spends hours locked in his apartment and takes heavy doses of un-prescribed amphetamines to try to cope with his various demons.
Wasn't that worth a story during the four-hour pre-game, perhaps twinned with the suicide last November of former Eagles defensive back Andre Watters, another apparent victim of constant concussions suffered during his playing career? How does the network of Edward R. Murrow not even offer a whiff of such timely and telling stories during its marquee day of football programming.
To compound the error, CBS ran a pre-game segment sponsored by McDonalds called "Playoff Pounders" which showed, in order, the top five body-numbing, brain-jarring wicked hits administered so far in the 2007 playoffs. In light of all those players now walking around on artificial knees and hips, some still suffering from post-concussive symptoms, how in good conscience could CBS air such a gratuitously violent feature, even if the quarter-pounder types surely were paying a pretty penny to be the title sponsor of such tripe?
Purists might argue that CBS Sports is in the entertainment business, and no one watching on Super Bowl Sunday wants to see such depressing news. But the network had no problem airing heart-tugging features on the premature deaths of former Bears running backs Brian Piccollo and Walter Payton, not to mention Walsh's fight against cancer, or the real-life horror of coping with life in Baghdad on Super Bowl Sunday.
But back to what the network did give us.
Their most semi-controversial story of the pre-game focused on Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who had to be given a judicial reprieve from house arrest because of pending weapons charges in order to leave Illinois and play in the Super Bowl. Here's a guy who kept assault weapons and 500 rounds of ammunition in a house he shared with his girlfriend and their two toddler children, but football clearly took precedence over responsible jurisprudence.
It was a story that was covered ad nauseum for weeks, though Esiason and fellow pre-game analyst Shannon Sharpe at least spiced it up with a huge difference of opinion on whether Johnson should have been allowed to play at all.
"I think the Chicago Bears missed an opportunity here to send a message not only to their own team but to the rest of the players in the NFL, "Esiason said. "They should have deactivated him for the rest of the season, and that means the playoffs and the Super Bowl. I think they made a mistake¿ There are things more important than the game right here."
Said Sharpe, "There are a lot of people out there under house arrest that get an opportunity to go to their job and work every day. Tank Johnson's job just requires that he come down to Miami. I think he should have been here¿ Tank Johnson is not a threat to the community, and that's why he he's here."
Of course he's not a threat. After all, they wouldn't let him take the guns or the ammo on the team plane now would they?
And now, back to the Super Bowl.
The telecast was like any game handled by smooth operating Jim Nantz and perceptive analyst Phil Simms, my favorite among any NFL announcing team on television (for one game, any game, on radio or TV, I'll still take Marv Albert). At the start of the game, Simms said he didn't think the rainy weather was going to be much of a factor, but after three fumbles in the first quarter in a steady downpour, at least he had no difficulty admitting he'd been wrong.
To nitpick, it would have been nice for both announcers to explain at some point why the field hadn't gotten muddy despite the deluge (Dolphin Stadium has tons of sand and a special drainage system underneath to assure mostly sure footing) and CBS was a tad late in showing a replay illustrating why Colts receiver Reggie Wayne was so wide open for that long first quarter touchdown.
But one of the best pictures of the night was a replay of Bears return man Devin Hester watching himself on the stadium Jumbotron returning the opening kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown, even as he was sprinting toward the end zone. Another dead-on replay from a variety of angles clearly showed that Colts cornerback Kelvin Hayden's 56-yard interception touchdown to break open the game should not have been overturned, because both his feet stayed in bounds on the sidelines, despite a challenge from Chicago.
Also to their credit, CBS did not beat to death the Peyton Manning legacy story, or the historical implications of having two African-American head coaches in the Super Bowl for the first time. Both issues were obviously part of the commentary, but with proper restraint until the timing was absolutely right on both fronts.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the network's overall news judgment. Yes, it was Super Bowl Sunday, but a dose of the real world after professional football, long after the confetti has stopped flying and the cameras have turned off, should not have been ignored.
Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or Badgerlen@aol.com.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00689.html
I agree with the article. It would be nice if the stations would air something that could potentially make a difference in the community, be it the football community or any other community in general.
The story of Ted Johnson, if discussed enough, may get the attention of the NFL and potentially may lead them to try to establish a safer environment for it's players.
The story of retired players on disability also should be addressed by the NFL and in a fashion of rewarding it's former players. Gene Upshaw has clearly been against helping out his own (by own, I mean former players of the game).
