Changing Approach to Monday Night Football
There was a time when the less-is-more philosophy in the pro football booth was all the rage.
Remember the late, great Ray Scott’s touchdown descriptions as he handled the play-by-play of the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s? It went something like “Starr…to Dowler…Touchdown.”
Pat Summerall continued the tradition for many years with CBS, and later Fox, preferring simply to offer pithy commentary mostly intended to set up his far more effusively verbose colleague, John Madden. Summerall kept the adjectives down, the hyperbole to a minimum and pretty much allowed the viewer to watch a football game with minimal distractions, other than Madden’s often brilliant and entertaining take on the action.
When ABC went to three men in the booth with its pioneering telecasts of Monday Night Football, it was the beginning of the more-of-less school of commentary, particularly when another late great, the inimitable Howard Cosell, got his hands around a microphone and began talking…and talking…and talking.
washintonpost.com
9/3/08
Magnolia Tribune
