NFL's "Sunday Night Football" Needs a Serious Tuneup

In a single day of NFL action, we saw a kicker urinating on his team's sideline, an organization that may or may not be hanging its football team out to dry in a winless season, a quarterback kill his team's hopes for victory on a game-ending spike, and a player pantomime a gunshot into his own leg. As an endzone celebration.

Just another Sunday in the NFL.

But none of those things happened in the night game. You know, the one game on TV that everyone gets to watch together at night. The one game on Sunday that always turns out to be a low-scoring dud. The one game with at least one team that nobody wants to watch or, even worse, saw on national TV last week.

These are just a few of several beefs I have with “Sunday Night Football,” the NFL's flagship game. Since “Monday Night Football” moved to ESPN, NBC has held the rights to the only prime-time NFL broadcast on television. The show was great when it made its debut, inspired largely by the presentation antics of the now-defunct XFL. That presentation value has remained stagnant to date, however.

That stagnation could not be better illustrated than last night's appearance of Bob Costas. The broadcasting legend is not the biggest problem with the Sunday Night telecast, but his presence there is a fine place to start. Known primarily for his baseball passions, Costas serves as the de facto master of ceremonies, broadcasting from the stadium. Yes, he's actually at the game, because....uh....

Why Costas bothers making the trip with Al and Cris is anyone's guess. Costas delivers a monologue at the half that would be served just as well within the confines of a studio or, as in last night's case, from the front porch while sitting in a rocking chair. Costas' rant on the behavior of Bills wideout Stevie Johnson, whose aforementioned “ gun dance” cost his team a 15-yard penalty, was meant to serve as a blow to the, paraphrasing here, self-serving entertainers polluting the good graces of pro football. Yet his remarks were so full of classic old-guy vitriol that one wonders if Costas himself spiked his mic and shimmied off-camera once his diatribe was over. The Costas monologue has come off as unimportant, as filler.

The entire Sunday night telecast leaves many of us feeling the same way. It's simply there to take up space. It isn't, as NBC loves to say, “Must-See TV,” or in Chargers kicker Nick Novak's case, “Must-Pee TV.” This telecast needs to be fixed, top to bottom, to meet the standards of the NFL and its fans.

The matchups are the first place to start, and it's a simple fix. If you didn't make the playoffs in the past two seasons, you don't play on Sunday night. Period. So long, Jacksonville. Bye-bye, Washington. Come back when you can field a decent team. And if your quarterback is laid up and renders your team lame (I'm looking at you, Indy and KC), NBC should have the right to bench you for another game at their discretion.

The broadcast team is fine, but someone needs to tell Cris Collinsworth that he isn't calling the 5A Kentucky state championship game, but is in fact working on a national telecast. Referencing Kent Tekulve is a rather dated pull, and the few oldies that recognize the name don't need to hear it during a football broadcast.

One hopes that NBC Rodney Harrison is the future of that telecast. At age 38, Harrison has proven that he can deliver with commentary on anything from his former teammates to other players in the league. Whether Harrison played dirty on the field during his 15 years as an NFL safety is debatable. Whether he packs a punch on-camera is not. If anyone deserves a halftime monologue, it's the guy that told Tom Brady to “take off the skirt,” not the 59-year-old Costas who bored America to death with his World Series calls.

Open up the mics on the field in the second half and run that audio live. Most of the kids are in bed by then anyway, and those that aren't are dying to hear some profanity. Would the same companies that sponsor “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” be so averse to the occasional F-bomb? I doubt it.

And instead of condemning, fining, and/or ignoring every player-based act of demonstration on its fields, the NFL should consider embracing it. Let the players, and not some crotchety broadcaster freezing his ass off in a booth with bottomless coffee, be the voice of the league. The players seem to know what makes good TV better than the networks do.

The NFL needs to stop and think of how to best showcase its brand on Sunday nights. And even though some of the players' antics will draw criticism and fines from the league, they still draw the attention of fans. It's time to revamp that telecast and let the players be the voice of the NFL, not the broadcasters. Costas, however, might find his rants welcome on another Sunday night program. I hear “60 Minutes” has an opening.