If you were the NFL Network you couldn’t do much worse than having Bryant Gumbel call your football games the last few seasons. He was awful. I’d have rather been probed anally by a hot curling iron than to have listened to Gumbel call football.
Fast forward to 2008, Gumbel stepped down from the NFLN coverage and was replaced by New York Giants play-by-play man Bob Papa who was paired with Gumbel’s former partner Cris Collinsworth. Tonight the duo made their 2008 debut calling the Denver Broncos-Cleveland Browns game. While I don’t get NFLN on my cable tier (it is available for added fee that I refuse to pay) I did get a chance through the NFL.com site to get live look ins through out the game online of the game coverage. I have come away impressed and a fan of Papa and Collinsworth.
The pair were truly very good. First off there is no better football guy on TV than Collinsworth, other than possibly Ron Jaworski of ESPN. Poor Collinsworth was dragged down by Gumbel like he had a ton of cinder blocks tied to his leg and he was perched on the edge of the Tobin Bridge just waiting for someone to push him off. He is much better as an in game analyst than a studio guy and I am surprised one of the major networks covering the NFL hasn’t made a move to get him in the booth.
Papa, who I’ve never really heard call a game before, was better than I could have imagined. Granted he wasn’t being compared to much in Gumbel but if this is how he goes about calling a game he is a rising star. Well prepared, knowledgeable he called the game efficiently and allowed Collinsworth to shine. The Joe Buck’s, Mike Tirico’s, Al Michaels’ and Jim Nantz’s of the world have nothing on Papa and if I were given a choice at this point in time I’d Papa over any of them.
If this was a preview of next week’s New York Jets-New England Patriots game fans of both teams won’t have anything to bitch about when it comes to the call of the game.
