The Word Masseur

Posts Tagged ‘Jimmy the Greek’

Football is America’s new national pastime — but that still doesn’t necessitate rolling out a six-man pre and postgame crew every Sunday on TV.  Six guys, plus assorted pundits, comedians, weather people, ex-players, celebrity guests, agents, mistresses and lord knows whoever else chiming in during a show that only lasts an hour.  And it’s not like these guys are tiny – they’re all behemoths, crammed together at one table like gumballs in a jar and unwisely defying the universal law of personal space.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to kill each other after each segment just based on pure hyper-proximity.

I like football – but not enough to tune into a show with six yammering dudes and zillions of charts, stats, graphics, diagrams and analyses of Jimmy Johnson’s hair’s wind resistance, plus robots posturing and a Miller Lite commercial every three minutes.  Sensory overload to the extreme, just like 90% of today’s media.  I’d use the term “jump the shark” if I thought there was any chance the NFL could be due for a decline and that the six-man pre/postgame show was a harbinger of it, but that isn’t happening.  I don’t know what’s more likely to cause mass panic:  an announcement that aliens have arrived on Earth with an avant-garde cookbook called To Serve Man, or the NFL season being cancelled.

Give me the days of yore, when the three-man crew of Brent Musberger, Irv Cross and Jimmy the Greek was all we needed.  Three guys, a beige backdrop and an occasional toss to Ahmad Rashad.  Simple stuff – we’ll talk about the games, we’ll get a quick weather report, we’ll give the Greek a few minutes for the over/under and we’re off.  No robots, celebrity impersonators, guys running around in suits diagramming plays on a fake in-studio football field, Mike Ditka trying to recapture the Ditka of 25 years ago instead of enjoying retirement, Terry Bradshaw doing his country bumpkin thing, Chris Carter delivering unsolicited opinions, and dudes trying to write something on an index card without elbow-tickling the nipple of the guy next to him.

IOH: -43

This song has nothing to do with football, but the title would be a great fit with one of those “Year in Review” DVDs, i.e. The 1985 Chicago Bears:  Architecture of Aggression.