Gruden in the Booth
'Monday Night Football' has added a brash voice to its broadcast team. But how can it be right to hire a temp?
The departure of Tony Kornheiser from the Monday Night Football booth after three seasons, in part because of his fear of flying, makes one appreciate John Madden all the more.
Not just for Madden's formidable combination of analytical and entertainment skills, but for the fact that, despite suffering from the same paralyzing dread as Kornheiser, he weathered 30 years crisscrossing the country by bus to share his football passion with us.
Kornheiser is a very funny man, and I regret that the preeminence of television in the sports world has already deprived us of his best newspaper writing. I hadn't quite made up my mind about his performance in the MNF booth. He seemed slightly miscast and never appeared quite as comfortable on Monday Night Football as he does on ESPN's popular Pardon the Interruption. Clearly he lacked the rapport with Mike Tirico and Ron Jaworski that came so naturally with his longtime Washington Post colleague and PTI partner Michael Wilbon.
Still, I appreciated his efforts to leaven what too often appears to be an overly somber reverence for the game. And if Kornheiser wasn't a perfect fit for Monday Night Football, he was at least a potentially amusing diversion and cut from a different mold than the usual NFL color commentators.
Jon Gruden, the former Tampa Bay and Oakland coach who will replace him, is a more typical choice for the broadcast team, though he doesn't come out of a cookie-cutter mold either. Gruden, who is still just 45 years old despite 11 seasons as an NFL head coach, has a reputation for being brash, opinionated, witty and irreverent, all of which could prove to be a boon to fans.
That is, of course, if he chooses to make serving fans his primary mission. Because we can be confident of one Gruden opinion at every game: that he could be doing a better job with that team than whoever is coaching it that day. And though he hasn't set any timetable publicly, he makes no secret of the fact that coaching remains his foremost love. That he covets a return to the sidelines is palpable. And young coaches with a career winning percentage of .540 and a Super Bowl ring usually earn another shot very quickly.
That likely makes him a highly paid temp in the MNF booth and, as such, a dubious choice. The success of any sports broadcasting team depends on chemistry and comfort levels that usually take time to develop. Gruden and Jaworski have some overlapping skills, and they will need to sort out roles and responsibilities. Why waste a season on somebody whose commitment to the booth is unlikely to extend beyond that?
In the end, viewers may always be wondering if Gruden is performing for them or auditioning for a new job. There is plenty of potential for conflict between the two aspirations. If the latter prevails, then candor goes out the broadcast window. And the fans wind up getting shortchanged.
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Mark Starr was named a senior editor in March 1998. He continues to serve as Newsweek's Boston bureau chief, where he has been headquartered since 1985. Starr has also held the title national sports correspondent since 1992. Before moving to Boston, he spent four years as a general editor in National Affairs.
Starr has covered eight Olympics, beginning with the Winter Games in Albertville and the Summer Games in Barcelona back in 1992. Before the Salt Lake Olympics, he wrote a cover story on American skating queen Michelle Kwan and, during the Games, covered both figure skating's judging scandal and Sarah Hughes' upset gold medal. In December 2001, Starr profiled Hughes in Newsweek's year-end issue as the "Athlete to Watch" in 2002, calling her a strong upset possibility in Salt Lake.
He was also prominently involved in four cover stories on the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding saga, which climaxed on the ice in Lillehamer, Norway in 1994. Starr has also covered three World Cups, writing cover stories on the shocking French men's home triumph in 1998 as well as America's "girls of summer," after they beat the Chinese in a thrilling Rose Bowl shootout in 1999. Starr has always been interested in women's sports. In 1996, he wrote on the U.S. women's basketball team hopes for an Olympic gold medal to jump-start a pro league. A year earlier Starr sailed with the women of America3 before its America's Cup challenge in San Diego.
Starr was a major contributor to Newsweek's special issue on the retirement of Michael Jordan, "The Greatest Ever" (October/November 1993) and the March 20, 1995, cover story on Jordan's first return to basketball, "Hoop Dreams." Starr has profiled a wide range of top personalities and performers in all sports including basketball's Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, baseball's Pedro Martinez, NFL coaches Steve Spurrier and Bill Parcells, skating star Tara Lipinski, tennis' Martina Hingis, boxing champ Evander Holyfield, track stars Marion Jones, Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis, soccer superstars Roberto Baggio and Mia Hamm, Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller, speedskating queen Bonnie Blair and golfer David Duval.
Starr has also covered some of the more dramatic political stories out of Massachusetts, including John Silber's longshot bid to capture the State House, congressman Barney Frank's revelation that he was gay and Michael Dukakis's 1988 campaign for the presidency. Starr rode the Dukakis "bus" from New Hampshire until the November election.
Prior to Newsweek, Starr covered Central America for the Chicago Tribune during the Sandinista revolution of the late '70s. He was also a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury-News.
Starr, a native of Boston, holds a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.A. in journalism from Stanford.
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