Epic Drop: Top 10 Questions for Tony Kornheiser

The casual reader -- not that we have any casual readers; I know that all of you recite these words in weekly prayer group meetings -- will detect a faint touch of hostility towards Mr. Kornheiser in today's link. You might have to read it a little closely, but on further review, I'm pretty sure it's there.

Now, as a fan of the Eagles, Sixers and A's, I like to think that I can endure a fair amount of annoyance. I'm also the father to two little girls, and while my patience with them is not infinite, it does exist, and there's more of it than there used to be. A lot more.

So why, exactly, does this chancre sore still rankle, 19 hours after the Cowboys edged the Eagles?

I'm really not that upset by the loss; it was disappointing, perhaps, but not world-ending. I have no great goat for the Eagles, other than a continuing worry that the game has passed Brian Dawkins by, and that the game was never even in the same area code as Sean Considine. But that's for another day and post. Right here and now, we're going to continue to examine the toothache that is Kornheiser, and to a lesser but not very much lesser extent, all NFL telecasts.

When I lived in Northern California, I had some nice neighbors who had been on the block for coming up on two decades. We watched their dog and swam in their pool, and they were terrific people. Like nearly everyone else in the Bay Area, they were originally from somewhere else -- in this case, Wisconsin. They were also diehard Packer fans, and used to have season tickets at Lambeau.

You can imagine my surprise when I heard that they were looking to move to... Southern California. Because the Bay Area winters (in which the weather rarely drops below, say, 45, and it never slows at low elevation, and you can enjoy nearly perfect weather for up to 10 months of the year) had gotten too cold for them, Lambeau Past Be Damned.

The point is that with age does not come a thicker skin, or at least, not always. It also comes with the wisdom to realize that you don't have to put up with something you don't like.

Now, I don't know a single person who is really enthused about a set of NFL announcers. Do you? Is there anyone out there who you're really excited to hear call a game, or is it just a matter of which particular moron you get to avoid? Yay, it's the Fox #1 team -- no Tony Siragusa! Yay, it's the Fox #2 team -- no Troy Aikman! Etc. (SNF/MNF, of course, offers no escape, unless you consider double-header telecasts and the Mike and Mike and Mike gigglefest a relief.)

So your options are to figure out a way to simulcast the radio feed (which is looking more and more appetizing, if a little bit Pravda-esque), or pipe in the good Westwood One radio telecasts of Harry Kalas and Marv Albert... and, um, why?

Seriously, NFL, why?

You can telecast the game into Spanish. How about giving us an actual football option -- not some half-assed hybrid of Sports Entertainment, but an actual, focused, not dumbed down for the laypeople feed. I don't care who delivers it. I might even pay extra. I'm begging.

Because the simple fact of the matter is that three-plus hours is an eternity of time to spend with people who you would not piss on if they were on fire. And a league that makes its fans endure that routinely... runs the risk of fans realizing that they have other options. Many, in fact.