From L to R: Roman War Helmet, Chris Berman

So, Roman sent me this link yesterday and said I should check it out. At first glance, it appeared to be some sort of internet communique between Chris Berman and News Day’s Neil Best. This morning I wrote this whole long post tearing it apart. Picking on Neil Best. I was all set and scheduled it for 1:15PM ET. Then I went and watched Bromance on DVR.Life was good.

Then Roman started sending me e-mails and messages via G-chat. It was kind of annoying. When I finally took the time to read what he was trying to tell me, I realized that I had totally Berrian’d the post.

I reread the column at Roman’s behest and discovered that Best was in fact being sarcastic. The entire interview was sent out by ESPN. There was no communication. Just a canned Q&A (Which I still for the most part picked through below) that ESPN had sent out via e-mail to different writers. When Best said “The next step in all this presumably will be for p.r. people to visit my basement and post this stuff for me while I eat leftover turkey and watch “Seinfeld” reruns,” he was joking. He was actually picking on ESPN. The lesson as always, is that I’m a dense person.

I felt like the clerk in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when he was trying to figure out how a telegram came from Los Angeles with Dr. Gonzo’s signature on it when he was supposed to be staying the hotel. The same message applies – “Never try to understand a press message. About half the time we use codes.”

Now that I’ve had a chance to wrap my mind around all that, I want to apologize to Roman (picture above with Chris Berman) for completely fucking this up the first time around.

Also, let me try to reiterate what Neil Best was trying to convey. This is an interview with Chris Berman, done by his employer, ESPN. Hell, Berman probably made the questions up himself. I’m pretty sure this is how they would do a live-chat with Chris Mortensen.

Chris Berman has the longest running streak as host of a weekly pro football studio show as the leader of ESPN’s popular Sunday NFL Countdown. Berman has occupied the host chair since 1986 and he is in his 30th year covering the National Football League. Berman, who was recently voted the Best NFL Pregame Host in a USA Today reader survey, will be in Tampa for Super Bowl XLIII, where he will host ESPN’s four-hour Super Bowl Sunday edition of Countdown (10 a.m. – 2 p.m. ET). He will also receive The Pat Summerall Award at the annual Legends for Charity dinner (Thurs., Jan. 29). On the verge of his 27th Super Bowl

/wanking motion

At this point Berman goes on for a few long paragraphs about how kick-ass the 49ers were in the 80’s and 90’s. Then Best asked him about his other favorite team, the Bills.

Yes. What I admire about the Bills is they had the gumption to keep coming back, especially after the first one they lost in such a heart-breaking fashion, on a kick that missed, by one point to the Giants. No matter how many times they got knocked down, they just kept getting back to the Super Bowl. It was amazing.

Yeah, gumption. They weren’t a great team. A bunch of Rocky’s the Bills were.

When we left the field with a few minutes to go in the half, it was a close game. We hustled through the long portal and before we were out of the stadium, the Bills had fumbled and Dallas scored again. We got in a van that had one of those remote TVs and here’s Michael Jackson getting ready for one of the biggest halftime extravaganzas I have ever seen. We ran out and there was a football game that was close. By the time we got to the car, it was in blowout fashion and the field that had the game on it was transformed into this huge concert with Michael Jackson. It was the most surreal 15 minutes

Wow. Even I am amazed. One minute the game is close and the next there’s a touchdown and it’s done! Over! And then halftime came and they set up for the halftime act. Do you think they practiced? Amazing.  I can’t get over it. I actually remember that game. I was really hungry, so I went out to the kitchen and my dad and I made sandwiches. By the time we got back to the living room, the halftime show was about to start. Those sandwiches were surreal as fuck.

"This is what sports are all about." - Chris Berman

How different is covering the Super Bowl now compared to when you first started?
When the Raiders beat the Redskins in Super Bowl XVII, it was myself, a producer, a cameraman and the flight schedule from Tampa to Hartford.

So, when Berman started, Super Bowl coverage wasn’t a bloated cluster-fuck of media overexposure? I’m glad those days are over.

What are some of the Super Bowl moments that most surprised you?
Certainly last year with the Patriots 18-0, that has to rank right up there. They didn’t come this far not to win, did they?

Not unless they were full of the same gumption the Bills were!

Sometimes it’s Glenn Frey at the “Hotel California” and “sitting on the corner in Winslow, Ariz.” We’ve done the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami and played off the Honeymooners, and another year in Miami I ran off the field at the Orange Bowl at the exact same angle Namath did with the No. 1. Back to Tampa many years ago, Paul Maguire and I went and took a tour of a cigar factory and tied it into the game. You can’t always push it but if something’s there, you go with it.

Some of Berman’s favorite things are stuff regular people will never be able to do and stuff that people fucking hate about him. Hotel California and the Honeymooners. Yippie! Cigars!

Now lets look at the comments:

Chris Berman is a bloated tool whose act was old and tired 20 years ago…now it’s just pathetic. Why anyone would be interested in his opinion is the real question.

Somebody needs to go back-back-back-back-back to bed because they’re grumpy.

” … many civilian sports fans are quite critical of Mr. Berman’s shtick. Sorry, but most of the time it just doesn’t bother me, especially in the studio. Really, what’s the big deal? It’s just sports.)”

Then why have a sports media critic blog in the first place?

Wait. That makes sense. Best’s response:

That’s a very fair question, one you’ll have to take up with my editors. But my inelegantly expressed sentiment was simply that some shtick – i.e. Berman, Vitale – is not that big a deal in sports coverage, relative to, say political or business coverage. But, like I said, your point is well taken.

This part, I do not agree with Best on. Why defend Berman when it’s his job to tear him a new asshole? Berman has bastardized the art of the highlight. He is exactly what Best as a media critic is paid to have a problem with. Will he defend Emmitt’s idiot shtick next? If you can’t find a problem with Berman, what can you find a problem with?

And Neil, in the future, be a bit more obvious with your sarcasm so dummys like me will catch it.