MVN - Most Valuable Network

NFL Network Bids Farewell To Bryant Gumbel

It seemed as if Bryant Gumbel was almost unanimously regarded as a poor choice for the NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football announcing duties. While he does excellent in-depth reports and interviews for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, he simply wasn’t well-suited to do announcing work. So, it should hardly be surprising that Gumbel and the NFL Network have decided to part ways, with the struggling channel immediately beginning the search for a new play-by-play guy:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to call NFL Network games the past two years, which was a new experience for me,” Gumbel said in a release. “But we’ve agreed that we’d all be better served going in different directions. There are a lot of talented people at NFL Network. I thank them, I wish them well, and I have no doubt that they will be very successful going forward.”

Gumbel was often slow to state the yardage gained after plays, misidentified players on a number of occasions, and simply wasn’t too sharp in the announcing booth. I’m not a Joe Buck fan by any means, but at least Buck presents information quickly and accurately, and keeps his mistakes to a minimum during broadcasts. When watching an NFL Network broadcast with Gumbel one day, and a Fox broadcast with Buck shortly thereafter, it quickly became apparent that there’s no comparison between the two announcers.

Another problem with Gumbel: He wasn’t likable. One of the worst things an announcer can do is talk down to his or her audience — play-by-play announcers not only need to present the game in an informative and entertaining manner, but they need to raise questions that the average fan would raise, make points that the average fan would make. They need to be relatable and conversational. Those are all things that Gumbel couldn’t do while with NFL Network. He often spoke above his audience, and that’s a Cardinal Sin for broadcasters.

Some possible replacements for Gumbel, based on chatter from around the internets: Pat Summerall, Mike Patrick, Tom Hammond, and Dick Enberg.

I’d LOVE to see Summerall return, but at age 77, his desire to resume his broadcasting career is questionable at best (I’d bet he’s perfectly content to broadcast one football game per year — the Cotton Bowl). I could see the other three potentially landing the gig, although my money’s on Hammond. He’s been underutilized at NBC, and I’m betting that he’d be eager to join the NFL Network’s broadcast team.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.