Supposedly Jill Arrington is being considered to replace Lisa Guerrero if they decide to dump Guerrero from MNF.

As Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. said, "Our situation has not improved."

The following is the schedule for the 2004 MNF Season. I bolded the games I think might be somewhat compelling.

9/9 - Indianapolis @ New England (Rematch of AFC Championship Game)
9/13 - Green Bay @ Carolina
9/20 - Minnestoa @ Philadelphia
9/27 - Dallas @ Washington
10/4 - Kansas City @ Baltimore
10/11 - Tennessee @ Green Bay
10/18 - Tampa Bay @ St. Louis (How come these two always seem to play each other on monday night every year?)
10/25 - Denver @ Cincinati (The first time Cincinati has been on monday night in forever.)
11/1 - Miami @ New York Jets
11/8 - Minnesota @ Indianapolis (Two of the highest scoring o's in the league. Should be a shootout.)
11/15 - Philadelphia @ Dallas
11/22 - New England @ Kansas City (The most potent offense in the league versus one of the best defenses.)
11/29 - St. Louis @ Green Bay
12/6 - Dallas @ Seattle
12/13 - Kansas City @ Tennessse
12/20 - New England @ Miami
12/27 - Philadelphia @ St. Louis

hey you forgot to bold the MIA/NYJ game. it's their first rematch on Monday Night since

the greatest MNF game of all time.

So Michelle Tafoya replaces Lisa....

really? GOOD. someone who knows something about sports for once.

Indeed.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/20...htm?POE=SPOISVA



That's because the role actually existed.

Gotta give Gaudelli credit, though, that's the first time I've ever heard that particular spin. "Her talent and the role were not compatible." Try that one at work. "I'm sorry, Johnson, your talent and this position are not compatible."



Not that Al would ever work behind the scenes to get an announcer on or off Monday Night Football or anything, right Boomer? ;)

I love Michelle Tafoya but I having her as the MNF sideline reporter is overkill. She's too good for such an unimportant role. It's like ABC felt it had to make up for the Lisa Guerrero debacle and went to the other end of the talent spectrum.

Agreed. Hopefully, Michelle Tafoya will still have plenty of time to cover other sports during the football season. Then again, it is only four months out of the year.

Lisa Guerrero was pretty bad last year, but she was a decent reporter before that and deserves a substantive gig with ABC/ESPN.

Charles Barkley is in talks with ABC to join MNF.

I love Barkley doing basketball, but this would be a bad move. Madden and Barkley in the same booth would be a disaster. Madden simply can't handle the kind of ad libs that Barkley would be bringing up. It's painful enough to watch him trying to deal with a two minute interview with Stewart Scott. Imagine that times 30.

Update: Barkley turns down MNF offer

Good to see the suits at ABC Sports have learned nothing from the mismatched lineups of recent years.

Barkley on MNF? Okay. And Dennis Miller was a bad idea. Thanks.

The more Charles Barkley the better. I have no idea how it could have worked but it would have been a fun disaster to watch. Put him on ESPN's pregame show. Maybe give him his own 10 minute segment. I don't know, but Charles is a bucket of fun.

Cheesesteak you crack my shit up. Barkley and Gary Payton were awesome last night on TNT half time show.

It's baaaack!

Mr. HeavenLy thinks Michelle Tafoya is trying to sex it up a bit. If so, that disappoints me. She did a great job interviewing the Hall of Famers on the sidelines. Showed she knows a thing or two about football.

I tuned into last night's game, thinking I could use it for background noise while I did some work at the computer ... and I turned it off before very long because they weren't covering the damn game. Maybe I'm sensitized because I live in Colorado, but do I have to listen to the entire Elway clan when all I want is football, sweet, sweet football? I kept checking back in over the next two hours, and only once was the broadcast actually focused on the field of play. The rest of the time? Interviews. Endless, cheesy, pointless interviews. I'd take a Madden "boom!" over that shite.

Eh. I know it's just preseason, but it made me grumpy. I wanted my Al Michaels fix, and instead I got an Elway kid beaming from the sidelines.

The eldest one looks just like him. It's like someone slapped a long wig on him or cloned her solely from his DNA without a mother.

As soon as I saw her, I was thinking that she'd updated her makeup style compared to other times that I've seen her. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as to call it "sexing it up", but I do think that there's a greater focus on her appearance now that she's the MNF sideline reporter.

I didn't get a chance to see any of the game last night, but I'm looking forward to the upgrade from Guerrero to Tafoya. I've always thought Michelle does a good job, and attractive women who know sports are hotter than very attractive women who don't know sports.

The Pats/Colts game Thursday night ought to be good. Would anyone care to wager who'll win? Moreover, will this be a preview to the AFC championship?

[ot]Why, oh, why is Jessica Simpson ruining the preshow? I won't be tuning in for that one.[/ot]

Edited because I thought today was Thursday.

I can predict with 100% certainty who will win: the home viewer! Should be a good game, but with today's parity it takes a few weeks to shake out who is any good.

Topic: While Madden is still tolerable, he is no longer nearly enough draw to get me to tune in. Well, having a ReplayTV, commercials alone are reason enough to keep me away...anyway, he seems to be a caricature of himself anymore. He just goes on and on and on about things he sees on the sidelines, in the stands, and so on. It's not terribly annoying, but it's not terribly entertaining either. At least to me. Maybe also I'm bitter because I always thought that Pat Summerall (growing up, the voice that always played in my head when I imagined leading my team to victory) got short shrift in their relationship. Towards the end, Pat was nitpicked about every little mistake while Madden's random ramblings seemed to go unscrutinized.

That's true, but a lot of that is due to the difference in their roles. The play-by-play man is expected to be accurate on things like names, downs and distances, whereas the color commentator usually gets more leeway. And besides, Madden's built his entire broadcasting career on inane ramblings (the turducken? seriously?). Frankly, I don't think either Summerall or Madden has been all that good in about a decade. But then, I'm one of the six people in America who wanted to give Dennis Miller more time, so I clearly don't know what I'm talking about...

In principle I don't mind the players introducing themselves in those short clips. However, I do hate all of the games that players are taking when it comes to the name of the school that they went to.

I was okay with "The Ohio State University", but now guys are giving their high schools because they are pissed at the university and just making shit up.

In the end, does it really matter what school they went to? The guy from "The Ohio State University" made the team, but big deal, the guy from ... oh lets say Mississippi Valley State is the Hall of Famer.

(I am so glad the season has started!)

I swear to God the extent of Madden's analysis is one word anymore: "heckuva"

Amazing that he continues to get a free pass despite not really having anything to add for probably the last 15 years.

If anyone has ever lived off their reputation, it's this guy.

Edited to add: carmelo, I'm one of the other five. :)

I don't know about Ty Law's relationship with Michigan, but I do know that him mentioning Aliquippa on the air is just about the coolest thing ever for people who live there(not me by the way). It's a small town that was destroyed by the steel industry leaving the Pittsburgh area over the last 20 or so years and they live and die by their high school athletics, it's about all they have left. So to have Ty Law make it out of there and mention them on national TV is a pretty big deal to them. He also does come back in the off season and donates money for various projects, so it's not just all athlete BS.

That's actually what really brought my attention to this. My dad played his high school football there while working at the J&L steel mills during the summer (way before Law was even born). While it was a thrill to to hear the word Aliquippa, what does that have to do with what we are expecting to see tonight?

For every guy that makes a sincere shout out you get the guy whose whole purpose is to give the FU to someone.

Sometime the players are just having fun with this segment. I really can't begrudge them for doing so. And "THE Ohio State University" never gets old.

P.S. I'm one of the other four regarding Dennis Miler, even if he's gone politically bonkers.

IIRC, the guy who started that trend was Laveraneus Coles, primarily because of how his last year at FSU went down. I'll give him a pass, but unless they're making a specific statement it very much verges on being way too derivative.

As for calling Miami "the U" or saying the school's full name (ie Georgia Institute of Technology, The Ohio State University) -- I'm cool with it as long as every other player who went there uses it too.


I'm not. They should have gone with my man, and their second choice, Tony Kornheiser. Watching TK struggle to stay awake past 9 PM would have been far more amusing than watching Dennis Miller take himself way too seriously while struggling to figure out what the hell he was doing there, and to look like he wasn't taking himself too seriously.

I flipped away at the half (to The Apprentice), but then returned and caught part of the film about NFL coaches. I thought it was pretty funny.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I would have loved to see TK with Al. I'm a fan of Kornheiser's from way back, and was hooked on his radio show for years. I'm just saying that given the option of Michaels/Miller/Fouts or Michaels/Madden, I'm going to take obscure-reference man every time.

I would love TK on, since if half the schedule is west of the Mississippi, TK would done his analysis at home on the phone. That would be classic TV

Yeah, TK would have been classic. :)

I have always loved Dennis, but it wasn't long before he became even a caricature of himself. Even when he tried to tone it down a bit and do some actual analysis/setup Fouts for analysis, the media had pretty much made up his mind and he could have been 10 times better than Madden and they wouldn't have noticed.

And he has gone ideologically out there lately. And I say that even though we're in the same party.

I would have loved to see TK, but I also think that Tony's favorite candidate, John Riggins would have been great as well. Riggo is witty and irreverant and would have made for great TV.

Riggo would have kicked ass. Or they could have just gone with rotating newspapermen. Though, I shudder at Stephen A, LeBatard, or Bayless on MNF. That would suck.

They should just go back to the 3-man booth now, and TK can spend his weeks riding shotgun in the Maddencruiser. Then they could make a reality TV show out of it. It'd be epic :)

From now on Brett Favre will forever be known to me as Gator Favre. That's all.

I had never considered Riggins for MNF until reading it here. A truly inspired choice! When Madden retires, Riggins should get the first call.

Just tuning up for the Vikes/Eagles game and checked in here. Now, I've discovered that all of the Dennis Miller on MNF fans, including me, reside in TWoP. I guess I just prefer him to the "Now.. now.. the team that scores the most points tonight.. is... is gonna win the game" commentary of Madden.

"See, see.. what they're gonna do here.. is pass the football. Those guys right there, they really know how to play football" I'll stop now. If not, I'll go on for days.

Anyone else besides me annoyed by how ABC kept trying to play up the Moss/T.O. supposed rivalry? Owens catches a pass. Quick shot of a dejected Moss. Moss catches a pass. Quick reaction shot of Owens. Owens Touchdown. Moss brooding. And so forth. Sheesh - enough already! We get the idea, they're both high profile receivers, and they both want to win. Thank heavens they didn't do the same with Culpepper and McNabb.

I *hate* it when they mike players. They have nothing to say that is worth hearing.



I don't know about Culpepper, but McNabb never says anything even remotely controversial.

Some players are actually kind of fun micced up, but last night, I found the Mike Tice segment a lot more interesting. It was especially fun to hear him talk so much of controlling Donovan and keeping him in the pocket and then to have Donovan run out and score right after that.

Exactly. DM falls into the Bill Walton school of color commentary -- it may not be pretty, but will always be entertaining.

I just like Minnesota, with their complement of former Terps all over the place. For the most pary, I find the micced players relatively innocuous. There's usually a lot of air to fill, and while it's generally not great it's not that bad either.


I'll go ahead and disagree. All those "Hey, you know Dan-o's..." DM trying to be another head was pretty bad. I'd have preferred a two man booth...

The comparison to Walton serves some points though. Walton, wacked-out as he is (1) has some insight into the game and (2) has credible relationships with players, coaches and personnel he name-drops. Miller was trying to be a Walton, but he didn't actually have the insight and didn't actually have believable personal contacts. If he'd played himself as a guy off the couch it might have worked a bit better. His stunning lack of rapport with the other guys in the booth didn't help either.

The fact that Riggins is not doing color commentary on any national network is really a crime. He does sideline work for CBS radio, I think. His weekly show on WTEM during football season is one of the best radio shows I've ever heard. He understands the game very well, can break down, but never treats it as the life and death struggle that some commentators do. And he is also capable of being extremely funny.

I think what's keeping Riggins from high-profile assignments is his propensity for off-color comments -- which, to me, is great but I can understand why a network would be hesitant to hire him.


My comparison of the two was based on their style rather than substance. They both seek to entertain by making provocative comments rather than providing in-depth analysis of the game.

Come on...didn't anybody see Torry Holt last night? Either he's a really good sport or he was in on it. There is no way he wouldn't freak if some of his teammates walked in on him in a tutu.

Part of the reason I have TiVo is so I can fast-forward through whatever crap they come up with to kill time during the "MNF" halftime show. I would much, much, much rather see the high school band or the frisbee-catching dogs in the stadium than horrible, stupid preproduced segments like this.

Trainman, you could not be more correct. At least it is better than "musician athletes" they did last year. How about scores and hightlights from around the league? Is that too much to ask?

It's amazing that the GREAT halftime feature from the '02 season "7 Days Till Monday" (Behind the scenes coverage of one of the coaches from that night's game preparing his team) has now de-evolved into Torry Holt wearing a tutu.

MissTulip, that was my impression as well. As I was watching it, I kept saying that he is absolutely in on the joke. He didn't even hesitate when they put him in full make-up. They really could have filled the time with something else, anything else.

BassetHound, I don't think halftime highlights are too much to ask. I don't have cable, and I work when the "George Michael Sports Machine" is on, so I could've used it. And of course it would replace the crap that's filling the halftime show now.

Aside: Does anyone remember the third background music song used for the lineups? It's pretty cool that they used the Strokes' "Reptilia," Interpol's "Obstacle 1" (Joy Division-style Goth in a football broadcast? Ian Curtis could be rolling in his grave!) and Audioslave's "Show Me How To Live," but what was the third song? It's driving me nuts.