Fox misses call with decision to break up Summerall, Madden
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The geniuses who run Fox have decided Pat Summerall is too old. They've decided he can't win the big ones anymore. They think his decision-making is flawed. Think he has lost a step.
Summerall is 71, which is about 450 in Fox years. At the Rupert Murdoch Network, anybody older than Ally McBeal is viewed with suspicion. So those geniuses — the same guys who gave us the virtual ads behind home plate during the World Series — have decided to break up the best team in football — Summerall and John Madden.
Imagine the St. Louis Rams breaking up Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk. This decision is as stupid as that would be.
Officially, this is Summerall's decision. Seeing the writing on the broadcast booth wall, he announced last week that he was leaving Fox's "A" team and would await reassignment. He left before he was asked to leave, and that's a joke.
Summerall has been a part of the NFL as a player and a broadcaster for 50 years. He has been a witness to almost every important game the league has seen, and he brings that sense of history with him every Sunday.
He and Madden are as good a pair as Montana and Rice, or Bradshaw and Swann. They make every game feel important. Their love of football is evident. And their knowledge of the game is unparalleled.
Summerall and Madden like each other. That's obvious. Watching their games is fun. They almost give you the feeling you're eavesdropping in their living room as they talk about the game on the tube. They're funny without sounding forced. They can be silly without sounding juvenile.
In the fourth quarter of yesterday's NFC Championship Game, Summerall mentioned rotund Philadelphia Coach Andy Reid's "apparent girth." Madden laughed. "What did you call it? APPARENT girth?"
Summerall and Madden are smooth. Like Stockton and Malone, they have been together so long they can anticipate each other's next move.
There is a difference between being old and being experienced. A difference too subtle for Fox. Seventy-one isn't old anymore, unless you're marketing your product only to the fans of 'N Sync. But Summerall is being treated like the last mastodon, the same way CBS once treated Ray Scott and NBC treated Curt Gowdy. Both were shoved aside before their time.
Maybe Summerall has lost a half step, but so has Michael Jordan and he's still a thrill a night.
Sure, he missed some calls in yesterday's call of the NFC Championship Game. In the second quarter he said the Eagles had a fourth-and-short, when it really was third down. But all play-by-play guys make mistakes every night. They're on the air — live — for more than three hours. They're human.
But Summerall's voice still is resonant. And his calls still are exciting without being melodramatic. When we're listening to Summerall and Madden we know we're getting an honest game, even as Summerall makes his way through the clutter of Fox promotions that pollute every telecast.
Did Fox ask any of us, the people who have been watching Summerall broadcast games since the days before Dennis Miller was a comic? Have they checked the ratings? If it ain't broke, why bring in Joe Buck? If the ratings aren't slipping, why break up the best team in the business?
Joe Buck? Why not do a real Fox thing and give the play-by-play job to Homer Simpson? Or go for a three-man team with Malcom in the middle.
Summerall isn't hip, or hip-hop. He's not cool as the other side of the pillow. Nobody calls him butter, because he's sooo smooth. He brings none of that oleaginous Gen X drivel with him.
He understands, better than most of TV's talking heads, that we don't watch a game because of who is announcing it.
Yesterday Summerall did his last NFC Championship Game. Sunday he will call his last Super Bowl. He says he would like to do golf, maybe tennis. He did it well before. He would do it well again.
But Pat Summerall has spent the last half century with the NFL. He belongs with the league, with Madden on every important Sunday in the season.
If only the geniuses at Fox, those same guys who think Tom Arnold speaks for the true American sports fan, understood.
Steve Kelley can be reached at 206-464-2176 or at skelley@seattletimes.com.