It's Monday night and you're sitting down to watch the game and have a Bud. In comes the blare of the trumpets guitars and drums... Dun, dun, dun, dun! The digitized helmets of the Rams and Broncos smash together, along with ABC's standard on-screen pyrotechnics.
It's ten minutes to kickoff in the 2000 season's first edition of Monday Night Football and the question is the same: are you ready for some football?
The 60,000 blue-and-gold smeared fans packed one on top of another inside St. Louis' Trans World Dome were more than ready, the Rams and Broncos were definitely ready (or at least their offenses were), you better believe good ol' Hank Williams was ready and if you're anything like me-sprawled across an extra-long couch, couple of beers in hand-well, then you were sure as hell ready, too.
Unfortunately, not everyone was so well-prepared for the primetime gridiron theatrics.
Cut to Dennis Miller, a self-described "ultimate fan" who was hired by ABC to be the vial of adrenaline for a program that, for more than a decade now, has seen its life support fade quicker than a terminally-ill patient visiting Jack Kevorkian.
There's just one problem with this "highly informed fan" and erstwhile comedic genius-maybe I don't belong at Duke, but I had no idea what he was talking about half the time.
When it came time for introductions in the booth, Dennis dropped a pretty inscrutable opening line:
"Kurt Warner is as implacable in the pocket as all of us are in a hammock." The conversation then turned to Miller's jacket, a throwback to the hideous yellow sport coats donned by Howard Cosell and Don Meredith. It was a light moment most fans could appreciate, until Miller unloaded something about "nehrus."
Forgive me if I spelled it wrong, but three friends and I spent 20 minutes looking the word up in two different English dictionaries-not "nehru," "nehroo," "nairoo," "nairu" and there were no words that began with "nh"-until we gave up and concluded that it must mean something about ugly jackets.
When we decided to check up on "implacable," we discovered that Kurt Warner must be as "impossible to reconcile or appease" in the pocket as we might be in a hammock. I don't know about you, but as long as the sun's shining, the breeze is blowing and someone is fronting me a few drinks, I'm pretty damn easy to appease when I'm in a hammock. And all this took place before the game even began.
If you kept watching, you got a free history lesson on Romulus and Remus-apparently the founders of Rome-or picked up something about a French bridge called the "Pont Neuf." But what they have to do with the speed of Rams receivers Az-Zahir Hakim and Torry Holt, or with the wrap around the leg of Denver's Terrell Davis, I sure couldn't tell you.
In between the obscure references, Dennis didn't do that much talking. The Associated Press referred to it as toning down his act, or as they put it, "refrained from too much over-the-top esoterica."
Refrained? To me, Miller seemed a little extraneous in the football booth and more appropriate for late-night, profanity-laced comedy bits.
Maybe the average football fan enjoyed his humor, but my guess is the average football fan would be happier with less of Dennis Miller and a few more sideline interviews with Melissa Stark.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.