Tonight is the opening night for America’s Game. NFL football is by far our counties biggest and most popular sport and the gang at NBC led by John Madden is ready for all the fun.
Here are some quotes from Madden and his NBC mates about opening night and the season that starts tonight.
MICHAELS ON HOW MADDEN VIEWS START OF FOOTBALL SEASON:
“For John this is like New Year’s Eve today.”
MADDEN ON GETTING STARTED WITH SEASON:
“I think its time to not only celebrate the start of the opening of the season, but to celebrate, I hope, good news. This off-season has just been filled with crap. Everything has been negative and it’s time to for some positive stuff. Ninety-nine percent of what happens in the NFL is good, and then that one percent isn’t so good, but we hear more about that one percent than we do about the 99 percent. And now, I think the celebration is: we’re starting the 99 percent and hearing about that, and getting away from that other stuff. I’ll tell you, I’m excited as hell to get this thing started.”
MICHAELS ON FIRST TWO NBC GAMES:
“When you look at the matchups that we got from the NFL it really can’t get much better than the way we start out,New Orleans at Indianapolis. This is the first time the Colts have opened at home in a number of years and, as the Super Bowl champions, against a team that was probably the best story in the league last year. The Giants are the team of mystery this year. Who knows what they will be? We’re going to see them right off the bat at Dallas. Just Giants-Dallas alone at any time is a great attraction.”
EBERSOL ON MADDEN:
“To walk into any team’s training camp with John Madden is like arriving there with, well if there was a King of England…I mean, the level of respect that people feel for him in this league and what he has done for this league as a coach, as a commentator, as a co-game inventor is a site to behold.”
COLLINSWORTH ON BARBER:
“Let’s face it, the first thing everybody wants to do when they bring you out of uniform and sit you down with a coat and tie and they put the camera on you is debrief you on your old team. It’s just a fact of life. Jerome Bettis had to do it last year. He made some comments about Bill Cowher and a bunch of people were screaming about that and he ended up being exactly right. Tiki Barber now has made some comments about his former team, and I guess my question back to you is, would you prefer that he says, “You know, Tom Coughlin did an unbelievable job with us and helped me with my fumbling and my teammates are the greatest guys in the world and I’ve never been around a greater group of guys?” Then collectively around the universe all you would hear was remotes going click, click, click. So, I think for all the criticism and all the attention that Tiki has gotten, what he’s done is to prove that he is willing to say anything about anybody if it’s what he truly believes, including his former teammates.”
EBERSOL ON WHAT DIFFERENTIATES NBC’S COVERAGE:
“I would have to start with having Al and John do the games. You have without a doubt the best play by play team for NFL football over the past 20 or 25 years.
Then when you get to our studio operation and Cris who, I hate to go on like this, but he is the most honored studio analyst of all time. He’s working with Bob Costas who is the most honored studio host of all time and now working with Keith Olbermann who, years ago along with Dan Patrick, just about invented the way that studio highlight shows were done on cable and we’re lucky enough to debut him this year.
We have Jerome Bettis, one of the more beloved figures in the league, not without a little controversy of his own. And then on top of everything, this year we debut Tiki Barber, who I think has already shown that he’s one of those rare athletes that, when it comes to the game, really wants to share with the viewer what he knows about the game. He’s not looking to just play up to his old friends that he played with. Then when you add to that, among the three or four best television reporters in the history of the game, we have two of them.
We have Andrea Kremer out here at the games and we have Peter King in the studio from Sports Illustrated. So I think the thing that differentiates us from everybody else is the strength and the depth of our on-air talent who are sharing with the viewer their insights into the game and telling the stories of the National Football League.”
COLLINSWORTH ON NOT WRITING A BOOK OF HIS OWN:
“Nobody would read anything I had to say anyway. I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know why I couldn’t. Maybe because I can’t remember anything that happened, when you get hit in the head for a living you tend to forget some things.”
EBERSOL ON FLEX SCHEDULING:
“There are few things in life that work absolutely perfectly, but flex comes damn close. Almost every game [on NBC’s schedule] will have significant bearing on the season. And we can only be happy about that.”
