Debbie Schlussel
 
  Are You Ready For Some Lim-Ball?: 
Put Rush in the MNF Booth 

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --WHEN ABC PRODUCER/EXEC Roone Arledge created "Monday Night Football" (MNF) in 1970, he wanted a "personality" to host it. That's why he called Howard Cosell. Today, with MNF's ratings at its lowest in 30 years, MNF needs a new "personality" to bring it off the respirator. That personality is Rush Limbaugh. 

Rush, the most highly-rated radio talk-show host -- with over 20 million listeners, daily -- is a controversial, colorful character. And he would, no doubt, add some of those millions to MNF's viewership. Limbaugh is also a football fan's fan. He does the Walter Mitty fantasy stuff we all wish we could do. He flies his private plane around the country to watch football at various venues. He's friends with a lot of the players, and yet -- even though he's now a successful, wealthy guy -- he can relate with the everyman, the meat and potatoes guy on the assembly line who's the meat and potatoes of MNF's ratings. 

Let's face it, like Rush, football is a conservative game with conservative fans. It's the game of Middle America, where people are drinking beer, not sipping chablis; where people are downing beef, not consuming tofu. The people who watch MNF are Rush's kind of people. They like to watch the hard, cold clash of bones, helmets, and flak jackets on the field. They want a Middle America guy they can relate to, to convey the action on and off the field to them, not another boring jock who overanalyzes plays and technical minutiae. 

And Middle American Rush has declared his candidacy for the job. 

Credentials? Limbaugh has experience in a pro sports front office. He's worked for the Kansas City Royals. True, Rush isn't a professional sports broadcaster. But he is a decades-long professional on-air personality who can speak about almost any topic at length --- and still leave you wanting to hear more. That, after all, was the attraction of Cosell. 

And the similarities don't end there. 

Cosell, and the high ratings he garnered for MNF, was a function of the exciting action he created off the field. He could describe even the most boring contest on it, as if it were the War of the Worlds. Everyone tuned in to see what outlandish, outrageous thing he'd say next. Kinda like Rush. 

And, besides, Cosell was very political, too (having considered a U.S. Senate Bid). 

Don Ohlmeyer, a former NBC VP and the ABC producer who brought MNF to life in its heyday, once said, "Clearly, television is a business, but it also exposes ideas to the public." It's Cosell's controversial ideas, whether it was free agency in baseball, minority hiring in sports, or endorsing Muhammad Ali's conversion to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, that made people watch MNF. It's Rush's ideas -- love them or hate them -- that'll make them tune in again.  Cosell was proud of a 1978 TV Guide Poll that ranked him the "most liked and disliked sportscaster in America." Like Cosell, while Rush has legions of fans, he also has legions who despise him.

 But they all listen to his radio show. 

And they'll all watch him on MNF. 

True, Cosell was a liberal former union lawyer, and Rush is conservative, yet there are multiple other similarities. There's the showman's ego factor -- entertaining bravado and braggadocio that's half-shtick, half founded in true belief. Besides making outrageous statements, Cosell once described himself as one of the three greatest men in television (in addition to Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite). "The Mouth that Roars" said things like, "Who the hell made Monday Night Football unlike any other sports program on the air? If you want the plain truth, I did." Rush has the same chutzpah, calling himself "talent on loan from G-d" and "excellence in broadcasting." 

Ohlmeyer, has been hired to bring the magic back. Reportedly, in the past, Ohlmeyer, who once defended O.J. Simpson, feared broadcast opportunities with Rush because of Limbaugh's "controversial" conservative politics. And other TV execs have expressed reservations about a politically controversial Limbaugh's ability to fit into an MNF-type broadcast setting.

 It's interesting that ABC is using the politically controversial Leonardo DiCaprio -- a movie star who's endorsed Al Gore for president and a self-proclaimed environmental activist hosting Earth Day -- as a "journalist" to interview Bill Clinton for a news show about the environment; yet the very same network has reservations about Rush Limbaugh . . . hosting a sports show. Puh-leeze! 

I polled friends in sports broadcasting and clients and friends in the NFL on the idea. The results? Most think putting Rush in the booth is a winning Touchdown. 

Dave Kenin, the former president of the USA Network and CBS Sports, has heard Rush speak "many times" and considers him a "good announcer." Rush, predicts the man who built "March Madness"-- the NCAA Basketball Championship Playoffs -- into what it is today, "would be memorable" in the MNF booth." Rush has a "crisp delivery, it's all positves." 

Describing Rush's 20 million listeners as a "tremendous credit" and "impressive," the vice president of Production and Television Operations for Major League Baseball, International, Russell Gabay, believes Limbaugh to have "the name, the personality, the announcing ability." In order to rejuvenate MNF, he observes, MNF needs "something outside the box" Limbaugh, he says, "is a good listen." 

Then there are the players themselves. 

Tarek Saleh, a 3-year NFL veteran who plays fullback for the Cleveland Browns, is a big Rush fan. 

"I love listening to Rush," he says, "because he's well spoken. He brings another point of view to politics, to the media. I'd love to see what he could do in the MNF booth. It'd be interesting and very cool." 

Jason Maniecki, also a 3-year league veteran, played Defensive Tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Maniecki, who lived under Communism in Poland until he was twelve, used to stay up until 2:00 am in college to watch Limbaugh's now-cancelled TV show. 

"Rush would be great in the booth," he opines. Limbaugh would "put a lot of color into" the game, adding a "definite new perspective. ... He'd be very entertaining, and it'd be interesting to hear him talk about the minute details of the game." 

Pete Monty, a New York Jets Linebacker about to start his fourth season, agrees. "My grandparents listen to Rush religiously. I think it's a great idea. He's highly educated and he'd bring something different to the game." Viewers would see the game "in a different light." Limbaugh, says Monty, "has a fresh perspective and fresh ideas, I'd be very interested to hear him get a chance at the booth." 

Aaron Gibson of the Detroit Lions, who at 6'9" and 380 pounds is the NFL's largest all-around player ever and a gun-owner, has never heard Rush, but agrees with him on his anti-gun control position. He, too, thinks Rush would be interesting. 

Rush "brings Howard Cosell-type controversy" to MNF, Robert J. Wussler told me. Wussler was President of CBS, President of CBS Sports, and Executive Vice President at Turner Broadcasting Systems (handling its entire sports broadcasting division). "Half loved Cosell, half hated him.But, they all watched him. There's a curiosity factor to Limbaugh." 

A high-ranking AFC football team and former NFL executive agrees. "He'd probably prove to be somewhat controversial, which proves to be quite popular, as exemplified by Cosell," he told me. "Rush would add strong opinions to the show and comment extensively on the current affairs of football and the nation. It'd be interesting."  "People would tune in to hear him say the outlandish, to see somebody not of football. They don't want the same old drivel," Wussler adds. "The wholesale utilization of former football players is not a good thing. They need fresh voices, faces, and approaches" to jazz up the MNF ratings. 

Wussler's right. And while many people told me they had doubts about Rush's football knowledge, they're wrong. Rush knows more about the game than they realize. And just because he never "put the pads on"-- football talk for having played the pro game -- doesn't mean the MNF Booth isn't the right fit. 

Cosell never played football, and Al Michaels, Chris Berman, and Leslie Visser -- the only remaining MNF personalities -- didn't, either. 

The fact is, MNF fans don't need so much technical analysis. That's why Boomer Esiason, who was the greatest quarterback in Cincinnati Bengal history, was the worst quarterback in Monday Night Football history. Other former pros, like Joe Willie Namath and Fred Williamson, barely lasted a season. Like Rush, Cosell's appeal was not so much his football knowledge. As his Washington Post obituary pointed out, though he always knew the passwords, Cosell was no student of the game and left that boring stuff to the ex-pros in the booth. 

"The game is overanalyzed when you only get football talk," Detroit Lions Assistant Head Coach Gary Moeller believes. Rush "would bring something different to the booth. I think the best analyst was Don Meredith because he was comical and funny and knew about the game from the general public's perspective." 

Exactly like Rush. 

The fact is, people don't stay up to watch the end of MNF anymore. Because of Cosell's biting commentary off the field, they used to. Television is personality driven --- and nowhere more so than in the MNF booth. Like Cosell, Rush is famous in and of himself, and always has a point of view, from which he never backs down. That's the something exciting people want to hear in sports broadcasting. 

After 30 years, they have to make the game fun again. Rush made talk-radio and politics fun again, and he's the non-sports personality ABC needs to do the same for MNF. He's the Super Bowl of commentary and hype --- and the man the network needs to keep from losing the ratings play-offs. 

And "that," as Cosell would say, "is telling it like it is." 
 

JWR contributor Debbie Schlussel is a Detroit-based sports and entertainment agent, attorney and commentator. Send your comments to her by clicking here.