Some opinions on Dennis Miller hosting Monday Night Football...

[sportsbank]

John,
To each his own. In my opinion she seems quite clueless when roaming the sidelines. But if you dig her,so be it.

[loudog]

All,

Just thought of something. Dennis Miller CANNOT be worse than Bill Walton.

Food for thought,

loudog

[reno]

Loudoug, I attended Helix High in La Mesa, CA with Bill Walton. Bill is a really nice guy. If I ever get around to writing my first book, which will be titled "The Dangers of Vegetarianism," I plan on interviewing Bill. Some of his injury problems were due to a vegetarian diet.

[Boomer]

Reno,

Where DO you come up with this stuff?

[Ronbets]

Loudog, agree Walton not good.

JDM, When Stockton was doing R/Sox games, I swear I saw him with Leslie (pre nose job). She looked great frontal view only.

Reno, What are you trying to make points with Bela Abzug on the women thing? BTW your three choices are unavailable. They are all under long term commitment with the Stardust.

BTH, I tried the radio sound alternative, but the local station around here keep the 7 second delays in tact for fear of Nunzio attacks.

[The Guesser]

I was also startled at first due to my incorrect assumption that Dennis didn't know Football. But if he's a draftnik, that's good enough for me. Fouts is excellent at nuts and bolts stuff, and he can be funny. Al Michaels has the same wry sense of humor as Miller. From hearing Al alot on Haward Stern, I think Dennis and Al might develop incredible chemistry with their riffs on Popular culture as well as Football. I'm kinda looking forward to this, but if the Game sucks, it's still gonna be Raw and Nitro, no matter who the announcers would be.

[Boomer]

Gee guys, I liked Bill Walton too. I also remembered him when he was a hippie and rode his bicycle to play ball every week.

Shoot, I must be so far gone from the mainstream, I don't who is good.

Hell, bring on Dennis Miller, what the heck do I know.

[AussieVamp2]

interesting that this time US tv is copying somewhere else, not the other way around

[Ronbets]

Boomer,

How bout bringing Dandy Don back for guest appearances when the Cowboys play?

[Boomer]

See now that would make me happy.

Dandy Don, Frank Gifford and yes, Howard Cosell. I was a BIG fan.

Disco and quaaludes.

Now those were the days.

[Hugh Betcha]

Esiason took the fall for having some truly lousy games on MNF. Last year, MNF included multiple games by Dallas, NYJ, Atlanta, Denver, GB, and SF... none of whom boasted of a winning record. A good game with playoff implications is what matters most to the non-wagering public.

Unless you had a stake in it, who would've stayed up to watch that 13-9 Pittsburgh thrashing of Atlanta in Week 7?

Maybe Pamela Anderson should have been contacted as a previous poster suggested! Nothing like a little cleavage to liven things up!

HB

[bigtimehoops]

Donnie O wouldn't allow Dandy Don due to the shots to the head he took in the Lipton Ice Tea commericals, never mind the fact he would have to allocate money in the budget for " potent potables".

I think the thing I liked best about Don and Howard is that they had alot of things in common with my father . A. They didnt waste anytime and were hammered by the first quarter and B. They always seem to be on the wrong side on the game.

As for Miller , hell Al at least you'll have a partner to spend them days down at the track with.


How bout bringing back Namath and OJ, now thats food for thought.

BTH

[AussieVamp2]

Who the bloody hell are Roy and HG?

By STEVE WALDON
Sunday 25 June 2000

Roy and HG: Are they a spoof?




It began as a ludicrous proposition that only Australian athletes would be innocent of drug-cheating at the Olympics. It evolved into a suggestion that athletes from all other countries should be tested in the dead of night. It ended with a bellowed "WAKE UP!!" into a microphone in a Sydney radio studio, and four grown men rocking in their chairs, racked by mirth, as producer Mark Kennedy smartly cut to a song.

If that scenario means nothing to you, it's because I haven't yet mentioned that the two men whose five-minute dialogue escalated to (yet another) inappropriate eruption were John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver.

Sorry, you probably know them better as Rampaging Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. Maybe they want you to be content with that, because there's not a lot of material around accounting for the men behind the characters.

"Well, we're dull," says Doyle (Roy Slaven).

"Yeah, I don't mean to bag my family, but I reckon they'd relate to me as dull," says Pickhaver (HG Nelson).

"Greig and I are incredibly dull. I'll do a bit of plastering this afternoon," says Doyle.

So, my very good friends (sorry, HG), this is not the usual story about two blokes banging on about sports. Well, OK, it is. Of course it is.

But hopefully it's more. The Sunday Age has been to the inner sanctum, poking around backstage and putting in the HARD YARDS for you. It has sat in the JJJ studio and seen the chemistry. It has shared a few flat whites with the perpetrators of 14 years of media madness.

So if this loose account reads like a formless lump of literary dough, it's only because I'm flying by the seat of my Fairfax gabardines ... just like an episode of This Sporting Life, the JJJ radio program that launched the cultish Roy and HG.

Now in its 14th season, it began, as many of the best things do, as the vaguest of unformed ideas.

Pickhaver first teamed with TV presenter Michael Horrocks, but the partnership was short-lived.

In 1985, Doyle and Pickhaver were acting in the same children's television program. Talking between takes, they found they shared the same love of meaningless media images and long-winded commentators.

They called the 1986 rugby league grand final on 2JJJ and, even though the structure did not click at first, the characters quickly evolved and the combination has endured.

Although others have since borrowed the premise of their show (some more heavily than others), Roy and HG are sufficiently iconic to withstand the copycats.

As foils, it is hard to think of two characters whose nuanced behavior has been more complementary. Their Sporting Life show is built around several invincible techniques - mock outrage, ridiculous exaggeration, preposterous suggestions.

The delivery is pinned to Roy's mannered irony, demented conclusions and brutal dismissals of players and officials. HG's rising indignation and brilliantly loose setting of the agenda are the other vital components.

The format is for HG to raise a topic, and ask Roy to comment (early on, they found it didn't work as well in reverse). Each program flails through several sporting topics, and a building rant is given all the freedom it requires before an explosive or sarcastic conclusion.

Doyle and Pickhaver say the characters are inspired by the almost banal and interminable issues-based prattle of older commentators for whom a game in progress was an unfortunate commitment. They name a cricket commentator.

Doyle: "Like (the commentator) - he loves a session of rain at the cricket."

Pickhaver: "Yes, he's in his element when it comes to rain."

Doyle: "It's like `Ah, rain, you beauty! It means I can just talk ALL DAY."'

Pickhaver: "When we came across that sort of long-windedness, when we worked out what was going on, we just thought `these guys are incredibly funny'. The idea that you can amuse the audience during a rain interruption, by talking about something that happened in 1966, that no one can remember, that was never captured on videotape - you might as well just be making it up. Join the club!"

Greig Pickhaver is a tall man, early-50s, amiable and inquisitive. He stalks the ABC's Ultimo corridors with a purposeful gait and is just as happy having a serious yarn about sport as he is parodying it on-air.

"Ah, here's Johnny now," he says, as Doyle arrives in the Radio National studio the boys are using to call the third match of the recent state-of-origin rugby league series.

John Doyle is even taller, late-40s, vaguely distant at first, but riveting to be near when he slips the Roy mask on. He is greying, trim and has a disarming smile.

Someone once said even his closest acquaintances couldn't always tell when he was being sincere or merely taking the mickey.

It can be intimidating, but I reckon it points more to his ping-ponging intellect and restless creativity.

In one of Australia's longest-running in-jokes, they call the match from a television set in the radio studio - as they have done with the rugby and AFL grand finals for many years.

The match is a blowout, but such a one-sided affair permits them the freedom to be more bombastic. Good play and poor play are both rich sources of material; they cannot lose.

Seven minutes in, Roy suggests Ben Ikin's injury is "a busted tool". A few minutes later, another player is grounded.

"Another broken tool! We could be in for a record here tonight!" bellows Roy.

"No, I think I remember a game where there were three broken tools," HG offers provocatively, to muffled laughter in the studio.

Before the game is over, "wrenched dudes" and other euphemisms have infiltrated the call to the extent that the play is secondary to the dubious nature of the injury toll.

Offensive? No, because it's all contextual. The worst thing that could happen to the Roy and HG characters would be to try to suppress the exuberance of their mischievous humor.

After the show, Pickhaver arranges to call past Doyle's Balmain home and drive him to a meeting at Channel 7 later in the week.

"That was good tonight, matey," says Doyle.

"Yeah - shame the players let us down," Pickhaver replies. He offers to drive me back to my hotel.

Devilishly tricky, these blasted one-way streets in central Sydney. Pickhaver misses a turn and the short trip becomes a minor expedition.

"I'm doing a figure-eight here," he says, trying to find Liverpool Street while answering a new load of impertinent questions.

Do Doyle and Pickhaver see each other much outside their working relationship? Pickhaver says they used to rehearse the show in the early days, but they realised it was not only removing the spontaneity that is the show's hallmark, there was a danger they would spend too much time together.

With neither wanting the winning combination to grow stale, they allow each other the luxury of distance. But when they are together, away from their characters, they have a pronounced rapport.

"But Johnny tends to stay up later than me, so I just go home," Pickhaver says.

"Neither of them suffers fools gladly," says Mark Kennedy, who has produced This Sporting Life forever. "But when they know you, they're very giving."

Later I learn that Doyle is the edgier of the two, and has endured bouts of sleep deprivation for 20 years.

"God, if I get five hours' sleep a night, I'm happy," he says. But does he recover on holidays? "I don't take holidays as such," Doyle says, steering his car through Sydney's inner suburbs. His idea of a break is to learn an old trade and use it to renovate.

At the moment it's set plastering. His Balmain house is being renovated with as much authenticity as Doyle can muster. "I was even going to make my own nails, but I thought that might be taking it just a little too far," he says, reverting to Roy's slow, sardonic drawl.

The Sunday show is a ripper. Clearly, I have not managed to alienate Doyle and Pickhaver yet, because I am invited back into the studio to watch how it all happens. Earlier, as I wait in the ABC foyer, I watch Doyle arrive, park his car, and emerge staring intensely at a piece of paper.

He paces the car park and holds the paper at arm's length, like a plain-clothes Shakespearean actor trying to learn some lines. Doyle comes inside, offers a friendly welcome and leads us upstairs. Pickhaver is opening his mail.

"G'day matey," Doyle says.

"G'day Johnny," Pickhaver replies.

Doyle methodically opens the pile of letters addressed to him and, bizarrely, to Mr Roy Slaven. There is a screed about Barrie Kosky's forthcoming production of Oedipus.

"Hmmm. That'll have them queueing up," he says drily, poker-faced.

As we gather in the studio, Pickhaver is rifling through the small hillock of newspapers and magazines from which he will select articles during the program.

Suddenly, they're under starter's orders. The portentous theme music starts, a melodramatic backdrop to the voiceover introduction.

And so, with the introduction that's as familiar to regular listeners as any mention of ARL or AFL stupidity, begins another three hours of outrageous criticism.

[postman]

Bring back Fred "the Hammer" Williamson!!

[Junior44]

In my opinion, the hiring of Dennis Miller is a brilliant move. The fact that he knows a little bit about the sport is just icing on the cake. Dennis knows his role. Michaels is the play-by-play guy, Fouts is the color guy, and Dennis Miller's role will be to fill dead air, add humor, and perhaps offer up an "alternative" viewpoint on the game. Miller is an extremely intelligent individual, isn't afraid to tell it like it is, and possesses a rare comedic quality that very few comedians possess: the ability to be funny and ad-lib on the spot. In other words, he doesn't need pre-written material. Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, and Robin Williams are a few of this breed that come to mind. The fact that he never played the game is meaningless. Neither did Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Howard Cosell, Mel Allen, Vin Skully, Marv Albert, Jim Lampley, Roy Firestone, and countless others. I don't understand what all the hubub is about. This is nothing new. I would much rather listen to Miller's witty intellectual diatribes with a cursory knowledge of football, than some ex-jock whose running on a lean mixture......Memo to ABC: Brilliant.