Manning Night Football
Some good news happened! ESPN announced a partnership this week with Omaha Productions for an alternate football broadcast on ESPN2 with Peyton and Eli as the announcers. As you can imagine, I am 100% on board with this and will be tuning into their broadcasts every week instead of ESPN’s regular broadcast, which already sucks anyway.
Peyton was long considered a perfect candidate for announcing since even before he retired. He has a natural comfort and charisma on camera and was known for his incredible football IQ so having him be at least a color guy in the vein of Romo or Collinsworth made sense. He hasn’t really done anything big since he hung up his cleats though. He had his show on ESPN+, which was charming, but the only real Peyton content besides that for the past few years has been those awful nationwide commercials. Maybe he was actually waiting for Eli to retire and get settled in. The Manning family seems pretty close overall and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a long-term plan on his part.
Eli wasn’t viewed as much as the announcer type, he’s a little less natural on camera and while he’s funny enough I didn’t think there’d be a good fit for him. He’s now basically a brand ambassador for the Giants and that makes perfect sense to me. All he has to do is talk to players, do press stuff, and shit talk other players’ golf games on twitter. But pairing him up with Peyton might actually be the best way to get him on TV. I fully expect, and greatly desire, the two of them to just zing each other for 3 hours. If it really is just hours of the two of them shooting the shit and having a fun time, it’ll be great. I do hope they do some actual football breakdowns though. Peyton is for sure a well of knowledge and hearing him talk about that stuff is enlightening. We’ve never really heard Eli do any football breakdowns, but it would be fascinating to hear his perspective on things and get a sense of how he saw the field too. So I hope the broadcast is playful but not entirely fluff.
I also really want them to just make Cooper the “sideline reporter” and give Archie some airtime as well, make it an entire family broadcast. Why not. It’s ESPN2, get weird with it.
They are set up for 10 games each in the next 3 seasons. The first few might be a bit awkward as they find their footing but I hope it pays off. It’ll be a fun altnerate way to watch the games.
I’d love to see them do something akin to Mystery Science Theater, and not just insult each other, but make fun of what’s happening on the field. I’d love to see Aaron Rodgers throw an incompletion, storm off to the sidelines, and have one of them say something along the lines of, “Ya know, that’s not really Aaron’s fault. See, the problem is he’s so short. If they gave him platform shoes or maybe a little soapbox to stand on behind center, he’d make that throw every time.”
Obligatory link to the Sportscenter commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KpwT3ihBBw
First thing I thought of when I read the comic. It was a good commercial, but like all celebrity spots they ran it into the ground.
Genuinely one of my favorite commercials, the part where Archie glares at them is so perfect
I actually laughed out loud at this comic. And I thought “Omaha Productions” was just another gag, until I realized that it really *is* the name of Peyton’s media company. Then, I laughed some more.
I’m really looking forward to these broadcasts.
Wait what
It looks like a knife.
To be honest, this is better than just shoving Peyton into the main broadcast. Unless ESPN brings back Tirico, that broadcast team is currently so bad that I doubt Peyton’s commentary alone would be able to fix it. I’m down for watching Peyton and Eli crack jokes for 3 hours instead.
Nothing will ever beat the “Football on your phone” commercial that they were in together
The Football Cops commercial was better, it was even the inspiration for the very first comic I made!
i miss peyton making commercials for racist pizza
Dang it, Dave!
Now I’m expecting the actual Manning broadcasts to be this entertaining. You probably set the bar too high…
(And why do I envision myself saying “my spine sucks” every time I see Cooper from now on?)
They should bring Archie on once every broadcast to tell the same story of when one of his bad Saints teams signed a punt returner off the street who shows up to the locker room on game day with a lovely parrot on his shoulder, the punt returner muffs the first punt and never enters the game again, and then the team all goes back to the locker room for halftime to find the punt returner’s parrot “day-ed” (as Archie says it). Do this every single broadcast. I will watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0X0r9S5K4&t=1m11s
I’m so excited for this broadcast. Like you said Dave, I’m sure it’ll take them a few to get their footing, but I’m excited to watch. It’ll be really cool to hear Eli’s breakdowns on plays.
My main concern though is that they are remote. They’re not going to have as good a view from the announcers booth and they’ll be a bit delayed. I understand they don’t want to travel and have this take up as much time as it does for the normal announcers, but I hope they do start going in person.