How to make Tony Kornheiser sound intelligent

The current state of Monday Night Football


Normally I find Tony Kornheiser to be a nuisance on Monday Night Football, where he constantly comes off as the chess geek trying to fit in with the high school jock, with his timid statements about football that require Ron Jaworski's validation. Usually the points are at best bad and at worst ridiculous. But this past Monday was quite different. Ron Jaworski, known as a great X's and O's guy, made Kornheiser sound as though he knows what he is talking about.

During the 2nd quarter of the Eagles/Browns game, the Eagles drove inside the Cleveland 10 yard line to the 8. After a 1 yard run on first down and an incomplete pass on second, the Eagles went to their bag of tricks and put WR Desean Jackson under center. He promptly threw an interception in the end zone. Following the turnover, Kornheiser asked Jaworski a question that probably most people watching the game were wondering, why resort to a trick play when you had racked up 192 yards of offense up to that point through the first 23 minutes of the game? Jaws responded, "because they thought it would work".

Wow. So according to a man who was a quarterback in the NFL for 17 seasons, who is a paid football analyst, a team calls a play with the expectation it will work? Huh, never thought of it that way, what great insight. I always thought that every once in awhile there would be this exchange between a team's head coach and its offensive coordinator:

HC: "Okay, what are we going with?"

OC: "Running Willie off the tackle."

HC: "Think it will work?"

OC: "No."

HC: "Alright let's do it."


Glad to have that resolved, though I was really hoping that Kornheiser would follow with "do quarterbacks throw passes with the hopes that it will be a completion?".


Along with his in-depth analysis, Jaws also gave us his take on the media and its tendency to speculate too much. This happened when Kornheiser went on one of his usual endless discussions (a discussion that usually involves Kornheiser thinking out loud and Mike Tirico attempting to keep the focus on the game), this one about the known fact that Romeo Crennel is hot the seat in Cleveland and that "they" say that Marty Schottenheimer may be on Cleveland's radar to become the next head coach. This started to tick Jaws off and he confronted Kornheiser about "who they are", followed by a rant about how the media speculates too much and has a tendency to create stories.

I have to say that fully agree with Jaws on this one, the media does speculate too much. I mean, look at the clown who got on ESPN 950 earlier this year in March and made the proclamation that the Randy Moss deal with the Patriots was "falling apart", and this was according to "the rumor mill" and "people he spoke with". Pot meet kettle.