There is something of a revolving door operating between coaching and television broadcasting, particularly in basketball and football. Accomplished coaches who get fired or quit take a couple of years off, cash a pretty good paycheck for much less work yacking on the tube, maintain their connections and familiarity with the league, and then get back on the coaching carousel. The majority of these coaches - especially in football, are somewhere between mediocre and horrible as studio or game analysts (this is more true in football, some of the NBA coaches are quite good).
One glaring exception to this is Tony Dungy. He has been remarkably great in his role as a studio analyst for NBC. He is quiet and low key, and does not have that boom boom personality of the other former coach who did so well on TV, but the magnitude of his intelligence, honesty and integrity just bursts from the tv screen. The big problem is that the NBC SNF studio is so crowded with personalities that there is not enough time for him - I could watch Dungy explain what is going on in a football game for 30 minutes at a time. I say this as someone who has always been slightly exasperated with Dungy as a coach - he was a great coach of course, but he is one of those or-so-earnest fundamentalist Christians who has to give a personal testimony and immunize himself from the sin of pride when interviewed after any success. He also has what I take to be a homophobic streak that we know to be quite damaging, not just to those closeted professional athletes, but to the thousands of high school and college gay athletes who suffer from neandertal attitudes. Still, by all accounts Dungy is a good guy and a straight shooter, who agreed to mentor Michael Vick when that could only have sullied his own squeaky clean image, who has suffered some extremely painful personal losses with grace, dignity and a minimum of insufferable Christian hypocrisy, and who is very very good at his current job. NBC, which does so much wrong these days, is doing a great job with its Sunday Night Football, and Dungy may be the best yet. Is it possible they can keep at it without screwing it up? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
