Admit it: You'll Miss Kornheiser on MNF

Tony Kornheiser gets very mad when I sit in his chair, pick up his personalized bobblehead from the studio set and shake the doll. In fact, even when I don't have the privilege of sometimes subbing for him on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption, he seems to dislike me -- maybe because I have a full head of hair or, more likely, because I'm intellectually beneath him.

That's OK. I am grateful anyway.

I thank him because he did the sportswriting profession proud in his three years on Monday Night Football. Kornheiser technically isn't a sportswriter anymore, having escaped the dying newspaper business like many of us, but when he was hired for one of the most high-profile assignments in sports television, he was dismissed by many viewers and critics as a columnist painfully out of his league.

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As it turned out, he often carried the prime-time broadcast with his sharp observations and well-grooved wit, providing the background knowledge necessary to pull off the sideshow shtick. Dennis Miller, a professional comedian, never fully understood the homework part during a brief run in the MNF booth. Kornheiser, a journalist at heart, knew that the style couldn't exist without the substance.

No offense to play-by-play man Mike Tirico and commentator Ron Jaworski, both quality professionals. But the booth is going to be a lot less fun and much more footballish with Jon Gruden, the deposed Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach best known for his gameday intensity and scrunchy Chucky faces. Gruden makes no secret of his wish to return to the sideline soon, saying Monday, "I dearly miss coaching," which means this probably will be a one-year gig with another ESPN search next year. I'm sad to say that no one's going to be putting another sportswriter in that booth or any other booth. Kornheiser is the first and last of a breed.

There's too much pressure these days to place mouthpieces on men who played and coached the game, which isn't an issue if they speak the truth and aren't afraid of angering their brethren. But for every Cris Collinsworth, who replaces legendary John Madden in the NBC booth in the other major offseason broadcasting move, there are two or three others who wishy-washy us to boredom. I recall Gruden as a coaching workaholic who seemed funny enough when he wanted to be, which was rare, and actually caddied for John Daly after they emerged from a Hooters hospitality tent last year, which was weird. And while he did impressive work for the NFL Network at the draft, do we really expect him to criticize a coach for stupid strategy or a player for acting like a diva? If he does, I'll be pleased. If he doesn't, I'll wonder where Kornheiser is. So will you.



He is leaving on his own terms, blaming his fear of air travel. I think he would have walked home to Washington if he'd been with me Sunday evening in Los Angeles, where a magnitude-4.7 earthquake shook the terminals at the airport for about 10 seconds. One look at baristas fleeing coffee shops explains why increasing numbers of people, in 2009, would rather avoid the road. "I am totally grateful for the MNF opportunity that I truly enjoyed the last three seasons," Kornheiser said. "I feel we got better each year. My fear of planes is legendary and sadly true. When I looked at the upcoming schedule, it was the perfect storm that would have frequently moved me from the bus to the air. I kept looking at the schedule the past month and wanted to find a way to quietly extricate myself."

Curiously, that also was a bugaboo of Madden, who made a cruise bus famous but logged so many pavement miles that his life became one endless road trip. Unlike Kornheiser, who had several years left in the booth if he wanted them, Madden was at the end of his career. His success as a pop-culture icon and video-game guru was mind-boggling, but his impact as a TV commentator waned in an instant-analysis age. You can fire up a laptop computer and find hard-hitting commentary on any game as it's happening. Madden simply wasn't hard-hitting. Kornheiser wasn't exactly Howard Cosell, either, but he was biting when he had to be. Whither Gruden?

"If I could handpick a replacement of a football guy, I would cast a net and drag in Jon Gruden," Kornheiser said. "He is the two things you most want -- smart and funny -- and has the two things I don't -- good hair and a tan."

Said Gruden, 45 and six years removed from a Super Bowl title with the Bucs: "It's an opportunity to see things from a different angle. Kind of like it's halftime of my life. Unfortunately, I don't know many things about other aspects of life."

Kornheiser will continue with Michael Wilbon on the entertaining PTI, a shining example of how sports journalism has evolved. The written word stopped being more powerful than the spoken word in the 1990s, when ESPN started hiring sportswriters to wear makeup and suits and deliver their prose into a microphone. I am one of those writers -- a regular on Around The Horn, the lively, seven-seasons-and-running debate show that precedes PTI on weekday afternoons -- and our target audience of thirtysomethings, twentysomethings and teens clearly likes to watch more than read. That offends me to some degree, simply because I love to write and want young people to read what I write and other journalists write. But they'd rather watch four guys argue points on TV than read what the same four are writing for their Web sites and, in a few cases, newspapers. AOL has an enormous monthly audience of sports readers on FanHouse, and when the site launches video, that's when quantum leaps in viewership will take place. It's a video age.

Point being, the people on the video screen have to be informative and compelling. Tony Kornheiser was that. But almost four decades after ABC launched Cosell, Frank Gifford and Dandy Don Meredith, in the all-time booth extravaganza, I wonder if straight football talk is about to overtake the sizzle and dazzle. Who knew that Jon Gruden, Chucky himself, would define the future of NFL commentary?

"I grew up a fan of Monday Night Football, and whether I've coached on Monday night or watched, I've hardly missed a game all these years," he said. "To join Mike and Jaws in the booth and to work alongside this top-notch team is going to be a real thrill."

Actually, in a booth where some men have succeeded and some have flopped miserably, it's his job to thrill us.