I Miss Brent

Your point is valid about Twitter. On a Brent or Al Michaels game, I love trolling Twitter to see the veiled gambling reference mentions or a Katharine Webb tweet. That's part of their "value" to me. They're not just play by play guys but both are cultural icons, to an extent.

No one tweets about Carter Blackburn calling a football game.

On the exhaustion point I was trying to make, Fowler has to be "dialed in" for both GameDay and the late game on ABC. It requires a pilot-like focus compared with being an analyst, like Herbstreit. Fowler has to make the transitions in and out of breaks for both and, in the broadcast itself, also call the game. It's being a traffic cop, calling the plays, reading promos, tracking players, getting their names right, throwing in a story, shifting to break, returning from commercial. Ever driven in Los Angeles-style rush hour traffic from 4 pm to 7 pm, three hours of stop-and-go with a couple traffic jams thrown in? That's the broadcast equivalent when you're hosting these shows.

I still do a fair amount of live TV sports play-by-play and I love doing it. Keeps a foot in the door and these is with about 5% of the staff of a typical ESPN football broadcast. Yet the concentration and the professionalism remains the same. It's exhausting but it's also a high of pushing yourself for a perfect product.

I shared a radio story a while back on discovering that I was about to get fired while I was on the air. That aside, hosting a radio show - for three hours a day and often solo - helps immensely with play-by-play.

I don't think that Fowler's background helps him with this. He is extremely vanilla and comes off, in my own observation in the business, as a guy who wants to please his bosses first and hang on to his job. That's fine (we all like paychecks) but guys like Michaels and Musberger have enough of an iconic status that they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. Gary Thorne has that same vibe in hockey. THAT makes for a better viewing experience.

ESPN would have been smarter for Fowler to do one or the other, either GameDay or the late national broadcast. I also don't think that losing him would make ANY difference in the ratings, should he jump elsewhere. None. You could throw Rece Davis into that slot and the ratings wouldn't change -- although that high-pitched Alabama accent would get grating after a while.

Much as it pains me (as an anchor) to admit but we are fairly interchangeable in 2014, whether at the local level or even at the national level. There are exceptions -- I ALWAYS watch the Sunday NBC game because Michaels is on the call. I'll give a Musberger a longer listen because HE is on the call. Joe Buck is a strong play-by-play guy but I didn't watch Seahawks/Eagles on Sunday because he was on it. He just happened to be on a game I was interested in. I did watch Patriots/Chargers - a matchup I didn't really care about - BECAUSE Al Michaels was calling it. That is a measure of an announcer's value.

Same with SportsCenter. In 2014, I don't give a damn who is anchoring, unless I come across Neil Everett -- if I'm up late and I hear his voice, I'll watch longer than I would have otherwise because I enjoy his energy and his writing. (Yes, I'll always pine for the 1994 ESPN glory days of KO/Patrick/Craig Kilborn/Charley Steiner on SportsCenter... looking back, that was the '27 Yankees of my profession.)

 

That's a dumb nickname. You're reaching ...

 

Doing Clemson Auburn. Still head and shoulders ahead of fowler

 

Brent, "Watch out for Louisville. I'm telling you, Bobby Petrino can flat out coach when he gets off his motorcycle."

 

He's one of us?

 

You don't miss Brent anymore?

 

I about fell off my chair when I heard that ...