Usually I try to write about the weekend’s sports events, adding commentary and critical analysis to whatever catches my eye from the weekend’s action. But every now and then, something leaps onto the front page and simply forces me to write about it.
Well, today was just such a day.
ESPN is going to have a new Monday Night Football booth. Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland will not return, via sources. The successors will be internal. No decision has been made yet. Both Tessitore and McFarland will remain in prominent roles at ESPN.— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) May 9, 2020
For those of involved in sports media and the production of such content, seeing a change like this is rather dramatic. This is a very big deal.
Despite its struggles since moving to ESPN, and the declining ratings in the preceding few short years before the program moved from ABC to ESPN in 2006, we must reiterate the importance of Monday Night Football. It is without question the flagship program on ESPN, and that’s including SportsCenter. It is the cornerstone of the network’s coverage of the NFL, the crux by which a network known for its insidious self-promotion frames the rest of its coverage of the league and continually reifies itself as the home of all sport.
So it is major news when the broadcast team for this program is unceremoniously axed in the off-season just after the NFL Draft. John Tessitore and Booger MacFarland have only been in the booth for a year together, an incredibly short time to build an audience or establish a rapport with viewers. Previously, Booger was relegated to the embarrassing and comical Boogermobile while Tessitore shared the booth with uninspiring Jason Witten, a color commentator so bland and unremarkable that he was able to remove the color from color announcer.
Poor Booger has been the target of unmitigated criticism from a subset of angry fans on Twitter and the blogosphere since his introduction to MNF. It is not at all difficult to see much of this criticism comes from a place of racial animus. “How dare an ex-athlete, a black man with a country accent (!), tell me what I should think about the game!” Booger is well aware of this hostility, but he also recognized the importance of his inclusion in the broadcast of a mostly Black game to a largely White but diversifying audience.
Let’s be honest, sports broadcasting is #sowhite for so long. There remain very few black men in a position of authority as the play-by-play announcer. They have been long dismissed as the dumb jock to the brilliant wordsmith that white counterparts such as Howard Cosell and Al Michaels are oft portrayed to be. Meanwhile, black contemporaries like Gus Johnson are ridiculed as over-emotive and “too gimmicky” for a mainstream white audience.
Personally, I liked Booger, and I found his analysis instructive and intuitive. Granted he made mistakes, as we all do, but where others would be allowed to flourish, it seems to me that ESPN pulled the trigger prematurely.
But this is a problem throughout sports with Blackness. White coaches get second and third chances while the Ty Willinghams and Romeo Crennels of the world are afforded just a single opportunity at the big time. How else would you explain Norv Turner’s repeated head coaching gigs?
While I look forward to the possibility that Peyton Manning may join the MNF booth, a rumor circulating long before the axe fell on the most recent announcers, I will eulogize Booger and his contribution to my enjoyment of MNF.
Godspeed, Booger. May ESPN find a vehicle for your talents soon.