From WaPo: Kornheiser, Not Yet in Game Shape On ‘MNF’

Tony Kornheiser played it safe in his “Monday Night Football” announcing debut last night, making few missteps but offering little for the highlight reel. It wasn’t exactly clear at times why he was there at all.

It’s still early, as the coaches like to say. But on the basis of his first preseason game, Kornheiser, the Post sports columnist and co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” wasn’t many of the things that ESPN hired him for. He wasn’t especially witty, provocative or insightful in calling the Raiders’ 16-13 win over the Vikings from the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

[…]

Kornheiser mostly spluttered, typically emphasizing the obvious and playing third fiddle to his more experienced mike mates, play-by-play man Mike Tirico and fellow color analyst Joe Theismann.

I saw part of the game last night whilst dealing with children and such. I thought Tony was fine, but I am predisposed to like him as I liked his radio show, his writing and PTI. Still, I didn’t expect much from last night–it was a preseason game for crying out loud. I find Madden (whom I like) to be fairly boring during preseason games. Indeed, what is one really going to say during a preseason game?

Really, most things said during football games are basically “emphasizing the obvious.”

Still, I will reserve my judgement on the Mr. Tony experiment until the real games start.

I do agree with the WaPo columnist here, however:

ESPN tried to force a little of Kornheiser’s “PTI” mojo by instituting an in-game mini-feature called “Tony, Tony, Tony!” The idea is to have viewers e-mail their questions to Kornheiser, who answers them on the air. It played like it sounds — contrived.

It was painfully contrived, in fact.

Tirico does a good job with play-by-play, I will say.