Kornheiser shows why fear of flying is a good thing

Tony Kornheiser's story, and at last report he's sticking to it, is that he quit Monday Night Football because his fear of flying was just too much to handle. It's possible, though his fear of planes was matched by viewers' fears of turning on their television sets Monday nights and being overwhelmed by yet another torrent of words from TV's latest attempt at revive the corpse of Howard Cosell.

The three-man booth seldom works, especially when one of them is trying to be funny instead of trying to tell us about football. It didn't work with Dennis Miller and he was a professional comedian, at least before he became a right-wing lunatic commentator.

Unfortunately, Kornheiser's replacement is coach-in-waiting Jon Gruden. While having a football guy in the booth is a good thing, having a guy afraid to step on toes for fear of hurting his job prospects is not. You can count on one finger the guys who were good, honest analysts while waiting for a team to call them. And I forget who that guy was.

Comments

[Andrew Bucholtz]

Agreed that most former coaches who may return aren't always that great, but they aren't all bad. In football, Bill Cowher's one of my favourite studio guys, and in hockey, Tortorella and Peter Laviolette have been all right (and Tortorella certainly didn't tone it down much). Hopefully Gruden follows that path. I think he could be really good; he's an engaging guy with a way with words and he certainly knows plenty about football.

[chris]

Korneiser is better served over at PTI, where he and Michael Wilbon are the best tandem in sports talk today. TK could never match Howard Cosell in the broadcast booth, but he was better than one time funny man Dennis Miller, who sold his soul to the Republican fear-and-loathing-mongers years ago and is now been reduced to being Bill O'Reilly's monkeyboy.