King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NBC looks a lot like ABC as it gets back in the NFL game and scores with red-flag-gate. Plus: Week 1 picks.

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Sept. 8, 2006 | The Pittsburgh Steelers ganged up on the Miami Dolphins in the fourth quarter Thursday, rallying to win the season's first game going away, 28-17. And if you watched, did you notice anything different?

Me neither, not much.

Oh, I don't mean the Super Bowl champs picking up where they left off, winning their ninth straight meaningful game, snatching momentum and the lead from the Dolphins on an 87-yard fourth-quarter touchdown pass and run from backup quarterback Charlie Batch to tight end Heath Miller and then salting things away with interceptions by Troy Polamalu and Joey Porter, the latter returned for a thanks-for-coming touchdown.

I'm talking about how the game marked the return of NBC to big-time non-Olympics sports broadcasting, the debut of its new Sunday night prime-time NFL show, time-shifted and abbreviated for the holidayish event.

For all the ink that's been spilled about the league's changing TV landscape, about the Sunday night game going to NBC and Monday night to ESPN and announcers switching networks willy-nilly to fill slots and even that package of eight late-season Thursday night games going to the NFL Network, the viewing experience stays pretty constant.

For the average fan, provided he or she has cable, which the average fan does, the big issue is remembering to tune to Channel 4 instead of Channel 7, or whatever.

Once you did that Thursday night you got the Peacock pregame crowd instead of the Disney pregame crowd. So big deal. Bob Costas and three ex-players in boxy suits instead of Chris Berman and three ex-players in boxy suits. I happen to think Costas is to Berman as James Joyce is to Soupy Sales, but does it matter that much?

And you can pretty much do three spins on a big wheel with all of the available players-turned-pundits' names on it and choose whichever three come up and you'd get more or less the same show. NBC spun and got Sterling Sharpe, Cris Collinsworth and newcomer Jerome Bettis, and that looks like a nice spin, but would your fan experience be so different if it had come up Tom Jackson, Howie Long and Michael Irvin?

And as long as I'm asking questions here: Where is it written that the only people qualified to sit at that desk and pontificate are former players or the occasional coach between jobs?

I like what CBS does with the NCAA Tournament, teaming up ex-baller Clark Kellogg with Sports Illustrated writer Seth Davis. I'd love to see S.I.'s Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman, or Peter King, who's doing cut-in reports during the games for NBC, has to say on that NFL panel.

Or maybe a sabermetric type like Aaron Schatz, Bill Krasker or Bud Goode, who can offer a really different point of view, not just the minuscule difference between, say, a linebacker's and a quarterback's viewpoint. I have no idea if these specific guys would do well on TV. I'm just talking ideas here.

Next page: Just losing that dumb horse trailer is already an improvement. Plus: Week 1 picks