Watching Fox's National Football League pregame show Sunday, we were eagerly anticipating what promised to be a sparks-are-flying interview with Arizona Cardinals quarterback Jay Schroeder, the subject of some rather uncomplimentary remarks by Fox studio host Howie Long earlier this season.
Long had said publicly he often felt he'd wasted five years of his career playing defense on an L.A. Raiders team once quarterbacked by Schroeder. Long said there was even a time some Raiders joked about pitching him off the team plane -- at 30,000 feet -- without the parachute.
Schroeder was fully aware of Long's feelings, having been questioned about it frequently this season by other members of the media.
On Sunday, Fox had the opportunity to put Long and Schroeder together again electronically to produce a bit of super-charged television.
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So what happened? Schroeder was interviewed not by Long, but by studio hosts James Brown and Terry Bradshaw.
To his credit, Brown did ask Schroeder about Long's comments and got the predictable answer, something about winning a lot of games for the Raiders and never hearing Long complain about that.
After bidding Schroeder -- appearing via remote hookup -- goodbye and good luck, Long was back on camera in the studio and immediately baited by Brown and Bradshaw to take another gratuitous shot at the now-absent quarterback.
"I have one thing to say," Long said, smirking. "AFC championship game, 1990. Five interceptions. 51-3 {Buffalo 51, Raiders 3}. I'll let it go at that."
We won't. That's a personal foul, and Long should have done the interview. If you're going to take a cheap shot, you had better be prepared to let him respond to your face, whether it's in a locker room, in a studio setting or via remote hookup.
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But Scott Ackerson, producer of Fox's studio show, said he never considered having Long do the Schroeder interview. He said all of the show's two-way remotes are always handled by co-hosts Brown and Bradshaw and there was no reason to change for Schroeder.
"We did ask the question about Howie's comments," Ackerson said. "It would have been strange to have him on and not ask the question. I thought we handled it the right way."
When it comes to pregame shows, some of the rules of engagement often are different than the standards applied by television news operations.
Maybe that's why ESPN for the most part puts out the best pregame product on the air. They've got real reporters -- not ex-jocks and coaches on hiatus -- providing most of the legitimate news and feature stories used in the hour-long format. They've also got Chris Mortensen, a long-time newspaper reporter covering the NFL, providing solid stories on current events around the league.
NBC rates No. 2 in my book mostly because of the presence of Will McDonough, still a working newspaper guy who's always been right on top of all the developments around the league and has never been shy about breaking them in print or on the air.
What do we get from Fox?
Occasionally, there is news, usually gathered behind the scenes by former USA Today reporter John Czarnecki, listed as an editorial consultant for Fox's studio show. Two weeks ago, Czarnecki's good work resulted in NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue being asked by Bradshaw about the possibility of the league building a stadium in Los Angeles to make sure a team stays in the nation's No. 2 TV market. Score one for journalism, even if Czarnecki never appears on camera.
But last week, it was Jimmy Johnson doing an incredibly puffy piece on Dave Wannstedt, head coach of the Bears -- who worked for Johnson for 15 years as an assistant at Oklahoma State, Miami and Dallas before taking the Chicago job two years ago.
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Fox is not alone in this crummy chummy stuff. Last week, NBC sent Joe Gibbs to San Diego for a piece on San Diego Chargers quarterback Stan Humphries, a man Gibbs drafted and coached for four years before trading him to San Diego in 1992.
And ESPN is hardly guilt-free. Last week, Phil Simms was dispatched to New England to interview his old coach, Bill Parcells, who used to interview Simms, the quarterback, when Parcells was a studio host for NBC. I must admit Parcells had a priceless answer when Simms asked him where he'd be on the depth chart if he'd signed as a free agent with the Patriots two years ago.
"Sitting on the bench," behind Drew Bledsoe, Parcells told him.
Still, among the cardinal rules in Journalism 101 -- print and broadcast -- is that friends are not supposed to interview friends, just as ex-coaches and retired players should not be interviewing current coaches and players they once coached and played with.
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Ackerson of Fox disagreed.
"We don't look at the show as hard-core news," he said. "It's info-entertainment. I don't see what we're doing as a problem. It's not hard-core journalism. We're not trying to win Pulitzer prizes. We give you information and try to entertain you.
"Our viewers seem to be enjoying it. Our numbers {ratings} are good. We're getting a younger audience into it. Why do people turn on the TV? To be entertained. They don't want to be beaten over the head with gloom and doom."
Heavens to Howard Cosell, we'll have to disagree. Just because they paid $1.58 billion for the rights to air NFL games for the next four years does not give Fox or anyone else in the network or cable business the right to become a part of the league's relentless publicity machine.
Give us the good news and the bad. Let reporters report, let ex-coaches and players analyze the game and let Howie Long go head to head with a quarterback he's bashed. He's a big boy, and he's done it before, on and off the field.
