The Little Big Show

It was a special night tonight on Football Night in America. The tandem--Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick--that made SportsCenter the show it is tonight reunited (and it feels so good) and it was just like old times.

And of course, with the three really witty, overly smug guys in Olbermann, Patrick and NBC's head sports dude, Bob Costas, hilarity ensued on the set...well, as much as hilarity can ensue. Costas introduced the duo by also mentioning Olbermann and Patrick's book on how they got to the Big Show.

Even though the segments with Olbermann and Patrick were classic, it seemed a little forced, especially on Patrick's part. He hasn't done this for awhile, and it showed in the beginning. However, by their last segment, Football Night's "Little Big Show" Olbermann and Patrick returned fully to their old glorious roots as the best anchors to ever hold the desk in Bristol.

And that brings me to my biggest critique of Football Night--there are too many personalities. You only get a little taste of Olbermann and Patrick. You only get a taste of the rather awkward relationship between Costas and Cris Collinsworth. And (thank god) you only get a little bit of the rather mudane and pedestrian analysis from Jerome Bettis and Tiki Barber.

My suggestion to make this show as awesome as possible, and to get people to start watching it, get rid of the segment with Bettis and Barber. It does nothing for the show.

Add more face time for Olbermann and Patrick and maybe let them lead the show. Let their quirky antics, which captivated a cable audience in the 1990s, captivate a newer generation of football fans. A generation of fans, by the way, which have watched copy cats on ESPN try to duplicate the chemistry of The Big Show.

And then, for analysis, let Costas have a conversation with Collinsworth and Sports Illustrated's Peter King.

And then, maybe, Football Night can really become a show that everyone will start watching.

Welcome to the Big Show

And yes, of course I'm trying to elicit the images of the mid-1990s when Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick ruled the SportsCenter universe. If you (and many people of my generation at least) do not remember the best-ever SC tandem in history, then you probably don't remember where "Welcome to the Big Show" comes from. So here's the story.

Olbermann used to open their nightly sports-newscast with that statement, "Welcome to the Big Show." However, ESPN producers found it, and I'm putting this bluntly, offensive towards the other SportsCenter crews. So, Patrick and Olbermann began opening SportsCenter with a sarcastic, "This, is SportsCenter." And thus SportsCenter's tagline/slogan/motto was born.

I still think that Olbermann and Patrick are The Big Show and I'm excited to see them team up together for Football Night on NBC.

But I must digress. This post wasn't supposed to be about two of my idols. It's supposed to be about me and what this thing we call a blog is going to be about.

It's going to be about sport...obviously. It's going to be my random thoughts about random instances in sport. You'll notice that, in the future, that I'll have a sort of West Coast bias. You must understand that is because I was born and raised on the West Coast. So if I don't talk about Yankees or the Sox, then boo-hoo. You can watch ESPN's Yankees/Sox Tonight staring Karl Ravech and John Kruk.

But to start, I love the Olympics and the next month or so will be dedicated to the Olympics in Beijing.

And I'll start with a daily post about quirky things you need to know about the 29th Olympiad. Okay, maybe they won't be so quirky, but at least they'll be interesting.