You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (33 page)

His response was perfect. He said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’ll tell you this: if I take this job, nobody will work harder and I’ll be the best who’s ever done it.” Now I
really
wanted him to say yes.

But a week later, Parcells passed on the opportunity. He said he really wrestled with the decision, and that he’d gone back and forth multiple times. At that moment, I’d have bet the moon he’d be back on the sidelines at some point. That point would be 2003 in Dallas.

WITH THE PARCELLS DALLIANCE
over, it was time for Ohlmeyer to get in full gear. Don decided to replace Lesley Visser as sideline reporter with two reporters—Melissa Stark, in her mid-twenties from ESPN, and the former star running back Eric Dickerson.

Dan Fouts, Steve Young, Nate Newton, and Tom Jackson came in to audition for the role of conventional analyst, and Fouts got the job. In short order, Dan would be in my Partners Hall of Fame. A great guy on every level and the ultimate team player. And you wouldn’t have a clue that he’d be on that short list of Greatest Quarterbacks Ever. No false modesty, either. No need to introduce him as anything other than Dan Fouts. Just Dan being Dan—always a joy to be with.

Now it was time to concentrate on our “wild card.”

Just as Ohlmeyer figured, he had turned this into a national parlor game.
Who is going to be
Monday Night Football’s
new “out of the box” announcer? USA Today
ran a readers’ poll with suggestions for the slate of candidates. When there was a conference call to update the media on where things stood, more than one hundred reporters called in.

One Sunday when I was in New York, I was a guest panelist on ESPN’s
The Sports Reporters
and was asked who would be in my fantasy booth. The Rascal popped out and I said, “Shania Twain and Maureen Dowd.” A few days later in Los Angeles, I opened up a letter. It was a short note: “Al, sounds great to me, too—Maureen.”

Because of the way Don Ohlmeyer went about the process,
everyone
was considered. Or thought they were. Don made it clear nobody in the entire country was being ruled out. A couple of radio talk show hosts and a local Los Angeles television anchor on KTLA—a Carlos Somebody—contacted Don and he told them, “Sure, we’re considering you.” Then they’d go on the air and say they were in the running for
Monday Night Football
. Don and I would laugh our asses off. If Don’s barber had thrown his hat in the ring,
that
guy would have been under consideration. We thought about telling all these guys they were only slightly behind Don’s dry cleaner on the depth chart.

We actually did bring in Tony Kornheiser for an audition. If there was a guy in the media at that time who we thought could bring us something smart and different, Tony was a legitimate candidate. (Six years later, Kornheiser would join
Monday Night Football
after it had moved to ESPN.)

One morning, Don was driving around Los Angeles and listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Limbaugh said, “I see where Don Ohlmeyer is the new producer for
Monday Night Football,
and he is looking to do things outside the box. I know football. I love football. I’ll tell you what would be different—me!”

Leave it to Don. He’d never met Rush but called him within the hour. “Rush, I heard you on the air today. Why don’t you come out to L.A. and audition?”

“Is this a joke?”

“We’ll see you next Tuesday.”

Next thing you knew, here was Rush Limbaugh auditioning.

We wanted to keep everything we were doing under wraps. So David Israel, a good friend of both Don and me who was involved in the recruiting process, found an out-of-the-way studio in the north end of the San Fernando Valley where we’d sneak the candidates in through the back door.

Rush came in and we put on a tape of the Tennessee-Buffalo Wild Card playoff classic that had been played in January—the famed “Music City Miracle” game. We put on our headsets and I did some rudimentary play-by-play. We always wanted to give our tryout folks plenty of room and space to see what they had.

Rush knew a lot about the NFL. It was apparent he was a huge fan and a close follower. And he knew how to connect with an audience. Love him or detest him, he knows how to communicate. You can’t possibly have that long a career if you don’t have those chops. In the end, though, it was a no-go. It wasn’t a question of polarization—Ohlmeyer was never averse to that—it was a question of whether Rush could devote the necessary time to
Monday Night Football
while doing his three-hour radio show five days a week.

Meanwhile, suddenly it was June—nine weeks away from going on the air with the preseason Hall of Fame game. And we still didn’t have our wild card.

Ohlmeyer, though, had had his eye on Dennis Miller the whole time. They had friends in common from NBC, where Don had been a top executive and Dennis had spent several years with the cast of
Saturday Night Live,
most famously as the host of “Weekend Update.” Dennis had grown up in Pittsburgh loving the Steelers and was a huge football fan. It was time to bring him in for the audition. At this point, we were banking on Miller being “the guy” or . . . who knows what? The clock was ticking.

I’d never met Dennis before. Now Dan Fouts would be there for the audition as well. So the three of us were going back and forth, re-creating a broadcast over a tape of a game and Dennis was off to a good start. He’d gotten off some very funny lines and was trying to demonstrate that he knew football. It was working.

We were calling a tape of a Packers-49ers Monday night game that had been played the previous season in San Francisco. At one point, I said, “. . . and the ball is given to Garrison Hearst over right tackle. Gain of four. Second down and six. The tackle made by number ninety-three, Cletidus Hunt.”

“What?” says Dennis. “Who?”

“Number ninety-three,” I repeat. “Defensive tackle CLEET-ee-us Hunt.”

“CLEET-ee-us Hunt? That’s not a player,” says Dennis. “That’s a raid on a sorority.”

Ohlmeyer was sitting behind the glass in the control room with his ever-present cigarette glowing in the dim light. Right then he said, “Let’s take ten.”

“Taking ten” was the code for me to go outside for a private conference and meet him on the street. So there we are, on Lankershim Boulevard with tractor-trailers and eighteen-wheelers rumbling past and belching smoke. We looked at each other and simultaneously, in complete unison said, “We’ve got our man.”

Then Don and I had a discussion. Could we get away with a line like that on the air? We never reached a conclusion, but Dennis got the job. What would have happened if Dennis had bombed in the tryout? To this day, I don’t know. Don was always confident Miller would be “the guy.”

TO SHARE THE NEWS
with the media—which had been waiting weeks for the announcement—ABC held a press conference call. Ohlmeyer had all of us come to his home in Beverly Hills. Fouts, Melissa, Eric, Dennis, and I all gathered in his den and took our places around this space-age speakerphone. As Don started to make the announcement, he got up and left the room. We all looked at each other. Don continued talking as he walked into a side bathroom. He never missed a beat. Then he walked back into the den, zipped up his fly, sat back down, finished up his introductory remarks, and said to the flower of American sports journalism, “Okay, any questions?” Don always marched to the beat of an entirely different drummer.

The mystery surrounding the buildup had the desired effect. In July, Dennis was on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
wearing eye black above the tagline “Can Dennis Miller Save
Monday Night Football
?” (Where had I heard
that
before?) The question was a hot topic of discussion for several weeks.

A few weeks later, we all convened for our first telecast—the preseason Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio. Don gathered the entire production team on Saturday morning in a conference room at the Cuyahoga Falls Sheraton. There were about forty people in the room: Don, the broadcast team, our new director Drew Esocoff, associate directors, production assistants, runners, the key engineering people, the research folks, and a few others. When Don walked in, he was wearing all white, sucking on one of the 120 cigarettes he would smoke that day. My longtime spotter, “Malibu” Kelly Hayes, leaned over to me and said, “Good God, it’s the Great Gatsby.”

Don’s reputation preceded him. He had a big laugh, a big inventory of stories, and a big personality. He also didn’t suffer fools gladly. He had written an expansive handout—a short book, really—about his
Monday Night Football
philosophy and distributed it to all of us.
Here’s what we’re we going to try. Here’s what is going to be different
.

In late morning, it was time for a break. “It’ll be a long day for everyone—I’m sending out for some lunch,” he said. And with that, Don reached for a pad and pen and started going around the room.
What do you want? Turkey? Lettuce and tomato? What about you? Ham and cheese? Okay. And what do you want to drink
?
Diet Coke? Caffeine or no caffeine?
Don took down forty lunch orders and then handed it to a runner. He’d sent a message.
Hey, we’re all a team. I may be the boss but I’m also taking food orders. Nobody’s going to stand on ceremony.

That was a year to remember. I love Dennis. Yet he’s the ultimate piece of work. He’s brilliantly funny but working with a comedian was a different kind of challenge. If you laugh at every line, you sound like a hyena. We were all going down a road never before traveled. Between second down and six and third-and-four, Dennis might drop in a short riff on Sylvia Plath. At times like those, I felt like
my
head was in a bell jar.

The changes went beyond the booth. Don was getting back to producing live sports after a long absence. And we had two new sideline reporters in Melissa and Eric. Ringling Bros. could have bought the rights.

On top of all that, almost every week the games were fantastic. There was drama and suspense deep into the fourth quarter. Or overtime. Blowouts were a foreign commodity on
Monday Night Football
in 2000. Which meant Dennis rarely had the opportunity to just let it hang out in one-sided contests, something we had been anticipating would help to keep an audience from saying good night before the final gun. In a 27–27 game with five minutes to play, the viewers didn’t want to hear an obscure joke about the Kennedy assassination or the Green Hornet or whatever esoteric reference came into Dennis’s mind.

The most memorable, wackiest game that season was the Jets-Dolphins “Monday Night Miracle,” which ended at 1:22
A
.
M
. It took place on an off night between games of the Yankees-Mets World Series. Miami was up 23–7 at halftime. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the broadcast booth and said, with random prophecy, “Wayne Chrebet is going to pull it off. I think as usual the Jets are going to come from behind, you will see. . . . I think the Dolphins have to be terminated.”

By the fourth quarter, the Dolphins were leading, 30–7 and half the crowd at Giants Stadium, including Schwarzenegger, was already in the parking lot. But here came Vinny Testaverde and the Jets. Testaverde threw three touchdown passes—the tying one, as Schwarzenegger had somewhat mused, to Wayne Chrebet. Now thousands of fans were making their way back in from the parking lot. However, the Dolphins then got a long kickoff return, and Jay Fiedler threw a 46-yard touchdown pass to Leslie Shepherd to grab the lead right back.

But wait. The Jets marched right back down the field, worked their way inside the Dolphins’ five-yard line, and Testaverde threw a pass to offensive lineman Jumbo Elliot on an insane tackle-eligible play with a few seconds left to tie the game again and send it to overtime, where they’d eventually win it.

I called it this way: “Testaverde back to pass and it is juggled and caught by JUMBO ELLIOTT! JUMBO Elliott—who’s been in the league for twelve years. It’s the FIRST TOUCHDOWN of his career! It’s the FIRST CATCH of his career!”

Dennis Miller never missed a beat. “Well,” he said, “you couldn’t keep him down forever.”

During that off-the-charts 2000 season, we had a lot of laughs off the air, too. Christmas Day was a Monday, so we were in Nashville for the Titans and Cowboys. On Sunday night, Christmas Eve, Dennis and I went to dinner at the Palm. It had just opened a week or two before. The décor included caricatures on the walls of a few local celebrities but primarily politicians and all the city councilmen. The manager had heard that Dennis might be coming in, so there was a caricature of him that they’d put up at the last minute. After the meal, the manager asked him to sign the picture.

Dennis said sure, and got up on the banquette to sign his name. But leave it to Dennis—he didn’t stop there. He kept going, signing his name on the caricatures of all these Nashville muckety-mucks and country music singers. All the manager could do was laugh nervously. What he really wanted to do was whack him.

We walked out and headed back to our hotel, the Loews Vanderbilt. I had a problem with the phone in my room and the maintenance man came up. “Yeah,” he said, “we’ve had issues with the whole phone system since the election.” He went on to explain that Al Gore and his staff had headquartered there on Election Night, a few weeks earlier.

“Wait a second,” I said. “When Gore called George W. Bush that night to congratulate him and concede the election—before all hell broke loose and we learned all about hanging chads—he did it from here?”

“Yup,” the guy said. “He was in the suite at the end of the hall.”

So a few minutes later, I made my way over to the Presidential Suite. And what do you know—the door was slightly ajar. Bud Adams—the Titans owner who’d founded the Houston Oilers of the AFL in 1960, had moved the team to Tennessee in 1997, and had negotiated television deals with my father—would always stay in that suite when he was in town. I knocked but no one answered. I tiptoed in, figuring if I saw Adams, I could just wish him a Merry Christmas. But no one was there. I was envisioning Gore, his team around him, in this room on Election Night. I looked at a coffee table in the living room and assumed I might be staring at the phone that Gore had used to call Bush. He’d probably used a dedicated phone that his team had installed but at least this instrument was in the neighborhood.