Voluptuous Thinking

Review of Colin Cowherd doing college football

September 4, 2007 | Media, Sports

I took the weekend off to help do housework and clean my garage.  So, let’s lead off the week with this …It’s time to talk about Colin Cowherd’s commentary during the college football game Friday night.  I made a point to listen to most of the first half.  House work had me too busy for the other.  However, I’d say Mr. Cowherd did fine.  Not great.  Not awful.  He did fine.  And he probably commented on all of this working Memorial Day.  I did not listen Memorial Day, thinking he was off.

Some background first.  If you listen at all to Mr. Cowherd, you’ll know his opinions are polarizing; caustic, even, to some.  He generally has the ability to cut through plenty of PR fluff.  He doesn’t seem to take many sides on issues.  In short, he’s worth listening to each day.  However, he does think he’s funny.  He’s also fidgety.  If you’ve ever watched him on his Webcam during the show, he chews his nails plenty, his eyes tend to dart around.  Admittedly, there’s a lot going on, but he looks like he’s got a touch of ADHD or something.  He’s admitted to sleeping about 4 hours a night with one leg up in the air.  He often references himself as “we,” meaning the collective “Thundering Herd” I suppose.  In any case, his radio show gets an ‘A’ from me, as does his insight, which in part, is why I devote some time on my blog.

So, that’s sets the table for Mr. Cowherd, who was the third analyst for the event Friday night, which pitted Washington at Syracuse.  Mr. Cowherd is from Washington by way of Las Vegas and San Diego (in jobs).  So, he makes no bones about his love for PAC-10 teams.  He did say this morning that he doesn’t believe the “PAC-10 isn’t the best” conference.  However, that comment felt shaded.  So, in any case, he probably held some bias for Washington that night.  So, that’s my part in doing a full disclosure (although, to be more fair, Mr. Cowherd has said he did not attend Washington, and for the life of me, I cannot remember which uni he did attend in the rain state.)

Regardless, the Mr. Cowherd played the third analyst.  Let me riff on this phenomenon a bit.  I’ve watched sports for a long time.  It’s evolved from one, to two and now three announcers in the booth.  I’ve never liked it.  When Monday Night Football did it, Howard Cossell had a lot of New York Juice.  So, he pulled that number.  Beyond that, it never worked.  However, networks have continually added more people from front to back, from the “studio show” to the play-by-play booth.  Fox has four guys in its NFl studio show.  NBC’s football night in America will have five (Keith Olbermann, Jerome Bettis, Tiki Barber, Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth).  Then it will have three in the booth. The phenomenon isn’t strictly a football deal, either.

 Even NASCAR coverage has gone to the army of studio hosts.  On ESPN’s coverage, there’s a studio crew (with Brent Musburger), then a trackside crew (with three people).  In short, too much.  There’s also too much feature reporting (”Hey, it just so happens the cats of the new sitcom ‘Cavemen’ is in the crowd tonight … hey guys!”).  But let’s get back to giving Mr. Cowherd a grade.Mr. McDonough’s introduction of Mr. Cowherd was dubious, at best.  So, that didn’t bode well for their night.  It felt like Mr. McDonough was treating Mr. Cowherd very much like an outsider.  More on this later.

First, it sounded, initially, like they were piping him in from Bristol.  His mic sounded tinny and isolated.  Sean McDonough’s mic boomed as did Chris Spielman’s, with whom Mr. Cowherd worked alongside that night.  Next, I liked that Mr. Cowherd didn’t force himself into spots, but then again, he wasn’t commenting enough.  I wanted to hear what Cowherd had to say after Spielman made some analysis of an event on the field.  Cowherd paced himself, however, and that was fine, too.

Meanwhile, it probably didn’t help that Mr. Cowherd labeled the Syracuse football program “awful” before coming to town to do the game.  The score did bear out Mr. Cowherd’s estimation, however.  Washington smashed Syracuse 42-12.During the cutaways, as noted, Mr. Cowherd’s fidgety behavior came in full swing .  He rocked back and forth played with his hands and couldn’t keep his eyes on his fellow crew mates.  Obviously, the guy’s got an agile mind and he wanted to pounce on about 79 things Mr. Spielman was saying, but couldn’t.  Plus, he looked like the guy who was going to sell me a washer at Sears — khaki slacks, blue shirt and striped tie.  Shouldn’t a radio icon have his own look?  Isn’t the “third guy” the personality?  Tony Kornheiser, Cossell and Dennis Miller?

There were a couple of moments when Mr. Cowherd could have inserted one of his theories famously expounded on radio, but did not.  I remember cruising into the living room, and thinking, “Oh, he’s going to mention his ‘blah’ theory.”  But he didn’t and that was when I shut the game off.

Overall, I think Mr. Cowherd did fine.  While zero chemistry existed between the three men, and the game became an abomination, when Mr. Cowherd provided some insight, it worked.  Not as exacting as his radio bite, which has time to be thought through, certainly.  However, he could work in the right booth with the right people.  However, Mr. Cowherd could also become that third smartass in the booth as Mr. Miller did — and people eventually turned philistine and stoned the comedian for that,ESPN is obviously trying to find out where Mr. Cowherd makes a bigger splash and this experiment is one of the easy avenues to work him in.  He’s show little on TV.  However, according to him, his radio show is growing and with the loss of Dan Patrick, it’s apparent that Mr. Cowherd is looking to step through the open portal.

If I manage to catch him in his next effort, I’ll watch and listen.