FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 28th, 2014
TRANSCRIPT: SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL CONFERENCE CALL
DAN MASONSON: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s NBC Sports Sunday Night Football conference call. As you all know, one week from tonight the NFL season kicks off on NBC, as the Seattle Seahawks host the Green Bay Packers.
We’re joined today by our on air team of Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth, and Michele Tafoya and producer Fred Gaudelli.
In a few hours, we’ll make a transcript of this call available on nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com.
With that we’ll begin with an opening comment from each of our speakers and then we’ll take your questions. Fred Gaudelli will go first.
FRED GAUDELLI: Thanks, Dan and thanks for joining us everyone. I’ll just keep it brief. I think whenever you get to begin the season and end the season, that’s about as special a season as you can have.
Obviously, next Thursday night in Seattle with the Packers and the Seahawks, and then Super Bowl XLIX on February 1st with God knows who, but whoever it is, you know we’ll be ready and be excited and so will America.
So we’re obviously greatly anticipating the season. We have an extra playoff game, a divisional playoff game now and that will be new for NBC, so we’re excited about that.
And more than anything else trying to finish up as the number one show in all of prime time for the fourth straight season.
So, with all that ahead of us, I’ll turn it over to Al Michaels. Al?
AL MICHAELS: Thank you, Fred, that is the goal to stay on top in terms of all primetime programming.
It’s always great at the beginning of the season, I know everybody I talk to can’t wait for football, here we go next Thursday.
I look at our schedule and I know I say this every year, but it’s the truth, I look at some of these games and just go, “wow.” Beginning, of course, next Thursday night, but I look at a couple of games down the schedule, we only have two inter-conference games, but the one of them I think I’m looking forward to is October the 19th, San Francisco at Denver.
If you look at it right now, it’s very possible that it will be a Super Bowl preview.
The other thing about our package is that through the years, let’s say five or six or seven years, the biggest rivalries in the league have been the Baltimore Ravens against the Pittsburgh Steelers and now the San Francisco 49ers against the Seattle Seahawks. And we have both of those coming up in November.
So that’s going to be a treat, a very special month with the Seahawks and the 49ers on Thanksgiving night itself.
We also have a Green Bay at New Orleans game with Aaron Rodgers against Drew Brees. That is special.
So from top to bottom it looks like it’s going to be great and if it’s not going to be particularly great in December, we can flex out of them, which has proven to be a great benefit to us through the years.
So away we go again and away we go for my sixth year with my buddy Double C. Take it over, Cris.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: From my standpoint, I think I finally reached an age where I don’t take this for granted any more. I know how lucky I am, not just to be doing these games, and the Super Bowl and all that, but to work with my buddies on a weekly basis and to do the best games in the league and just how grateful I am to be a part of the whole thing.
It’s a real blessing and it’s a real treat, and showing up in Seattle on Thursday night for that game is going to be electric. It’s the best crowd probably in the entire league, and that 12th Man raising the flag, it’s going to be a scene almost like no other in the NFL.
So we’re really looking forward to it and always a special treat for us is to introduce Michele Tafoya.
MICHELE TAFOYA: Such a special treat. Thanks everyone for jumping on. Whenever you have the Super Bowl, which each network gets once every three years, the season just takes on kind of a bigger feel for those of us who know we’re going to be in this thing through the long haul and aiming at that final game.
We were in Arizona last week and it was kind of fun to be there and know that we’re going to be back and you just sort of keep that in the back of your mind all season long, that this is kind of just a full season, packed full of great games and with the best one at the very end.
So it just somehow kind of shoots you into the season with a great feeling and great anticipation and excitement and I love our Thanksgiving day game. To finish Thanksgiving night with that matchup, I don’t know how it could get any better than that. So we’re all just really, really thrilled to be back together and looking at such a positive schedule.
DAN MASONSON: Thanks, Michele. We’ll now address the questions.
Fred, you have a successful program and it’s been successful for many years, but ultimately television is always about change and innovation. And I wonder, at least heading into this season, what are the major changes, if any changes, on the production or technical end of Sunday Night Football?
FRED GAUDELLI: You know, there will be some changes that evolve during the season. I mean, at the end of every season we go back, we watch every game, we evaluate every game, and we look at everything that needs to be improved from last season to the coming one.
This year was no different. We did all of that. So we changed a lot of our elements. We’re trying to do some things with real-time weather from the field, with real-time wind, and things of that nature. The NFL has in, I think, 17 of their stadiums, players that have chips embedded into their pads that are producing real-time information. At some point in the year they’re going to allow all the network partners to figure out a way to display that on TV and we’ll certainly be at the forefront of that.
But I just really think that you go back and what makes sense and what’s really going to have an impact on the viewer, because there’s a ton of technology out there, but a lot of it doesn’t really have an application that makes the game more enjoyable or easier to understand.
So, you have to be very, very picky in terms of what you’re going to use and then probably more picky about what you’re not going to use.
For Cris, I would like to get your sort of X and O perspective on this. About the middle of the last decade the Tampa 2 defense was really popular around the league, had a lot of success, and a lot of those coaches who believed in it have moved on in the league and Tampa and Dallas are still playing that still, but I guess do you think there’s still a place for that in the league or has some of the evolution in the passing game, do you think, is that part of the reason why we don’t see that used as much anymore?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: You know, I think that everybody catches up with everything eventually. You get to see it enough. When it was unique, people had trouble with it. I can remember playing against Buddy Ryan and the 46 Defense and the Bears defense, the first time we saw it in Cincinnati and everybody was like, ‘what the heck do we do with this?’
And then pretty soon everybody in the league was running it and people started figuring out how to attack it.
But I go back to the oldest saying in the book, when it comes to football, it’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Billy’s and the Joe’s.
If you put great players out there in any defense, it’s going to look pretty good. You play Tampa 2 with Robert Mathis and Dwight Freeney on the edge, you’re going to be pretty good at it.
So I think it all still has a place, but the longer that guys get a chance to study the tapes and to see it, the more that it has to evolve. But even Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy would tell you that for all people want to say about Tampa 2, it really is a heck of a lot more than that. And usually that’s about 40 percent of the defense, at best.
First question is whether Al has had his turn to sleep with the Stanley Cup yet. Has that been taken care of?
AL MICHAELS: Oh, thanks for bringing that up. Hockey season starts very soon and we’ll raise the banner when the Sharks meet the Kings in L.A.
For Al and Fred, curious what your take is on, obviously CBS is making a big thing of its Thursday night package and now we have another broadcast network jumping into that world. Is there room for another night of that without it taking anything away from you guys or ESPN or is there a danger of too much of a good thing for viewers?
AL MICHAELS: I’m not sure where that line is. There probably is a line when it might be a little dangerous. Right now, the thirst in this country for the NFL is insatiable. And I’m not sure it wouldn’t work seven nights a week. It probably wouldn’t, but I don’t know where that line is.
I do know that Thursday Night Football has been around for a lot of years, so it is a little different and I think that it mainly deals with more distribution. The NFL Network did not go to a hundred percent of the country. CBS obviously does. The first several games will be on CBS and the NFL Network and then you think the last few are just NFL Network only.
I think that it will be something that the league is going to watch very, very carefully. I think that they will understand. Look, if there is a diminishment in ratings to the degree that they feel that the ratings aren’t what they should be, they will probably reassess this. But if this thing works well and the ratings are good, you’re going to see it around for quite some period of time.
FRED GAUDELLI: I really can’t add anything to what Al said. I was just going to make the point it’s been around for a long time, it’s just never had the 100 percent distribution that it’s going to have now with CBS. I just think there’s a lot of wait and see as to what that impact is going to be, how successful or not Thursday Night Football can ultimately become.
Along those lines you guys referenced it earlier, obviously, it sounds like this streak of the number one primetime show does mean a lot to you guys. Could you talk about that? Obviously when I started on this beat 10 years ago people weren’t thinking about as popular as football was, this really wasn’t on the radar. When you think about having achieved that, how cool is that for you guys and how important is it to keep it up?
AL MICHAELS: I think that’s a great source of pride for all of us. The thing is too, we’re all sports fans. So even if we weren’t a part of this, it’s kind of cool to see a sports show as the number one arranged show in America.
I don’t know if it speaks to the lack of quality in terms of the rest of primetime or what, but I think more than anything else, it just speaks to the National Football League, what it’s become, how television covers it, and it’s just a great source of pride for all of us to be a part of this thing.
FRED GAUDELLI: The other thing I would add, and I can’t speak for Al here, but I probably agree with him. I know when I came over I was just hoping that it could attain the same type of prominence that Monday Night Football had when it was on ABC, so never dreamed that you were going to become the number one show, but it’s huge. It’s huge within our building. As Al said, there’s a tremendous amount of pride and obviously nothing lasts forever, but we want to try to prolong this as long as we can and it’s something I think about almost daily.
You guys were in San Francisco last year I think it was week four the text answer season was never the same after that. How do you view that team this year with Ryan Fitzpatrick as their starter, they should have an improved defense, but a lot of people are questioning Fitzpatrick, how far they can go with him. And I think, number two, with the head coach we have seen the New England three pretty much fail outside of Bill Belichick. Does O’Brien need to be careful so he’s his own person, his own coach and not be too much Bill Belichick as a first time NFL head coach?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I think, first of all, of course Ryan Fitzpatrick has to prove himself. I would say that this offense has to prove itself. I can’t imagine this defense not being unbelievable this year.
I mean, with the front that they have, they have to be considered one of the scariest teams in the league. I remember in that scrimmage the first time they went against Peyton Manning and we know what Peyton Manning can do against everybody but the Seattle Seahawks, it was like, what just hit us kind of a thing.
So, my personal opinion is, yeah, they have got some good players on offense, but if I were the coach, I think I would severely be playing to the defensive side of the ball and I think that maybe that goes back to some of Bill Belichick’s original roots as defensive coordinator.
Maybe I’ll be surprised, but we kind of know who Ryan Fitzpatrick is and I think he’s a solid player, he’s going to make good decisions, shouldn’t turn the ball over, which I think is probably part of the reason they got him after what happened last year and playing that defense.
AL MICHAELS: Just to weigh in. I look at the Texans as a team that was a really good team and it’s almost like in horse racing when you have a good horse and all of a sudden he finishes last, in a race, and the rail birds call it a throw out race. In a way I’m going to throw out last year, I’m not going to say that the Texans are going to be necessarily an elite team this year, but they’re a lot better than they were last year. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and I look for a little bounce back this season in Houston.
For Cris first and maybe Al you’ll want to chime in. Cris, I think it was a few weeks ago during one of the games you were asked about Super Bowl teams. And you had mentioned the Eagles first I think, I don’t think you said you thought they were going to win, but you think that they were one of the teams to look out for, I believe. I’m wondering if you still feel the same way and why is that? They really didn’t do much this off season, other than get rid of possibly their best receiver in DeSean Jackson and if you do, do you think they caught up to the 49ers and the Seahawks of the NFC?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: Well, I don’t know. But I do know I thought Chip Kelly had some fresh and original ideas. And I see a lot of it being copied around the league now. Nick Foles was sensational last year. You can’t say anything else. And you would think after a year of starting that he might get a little bit better.
I think they have the best running back in the league in LeSean McCoy, certainly one of the best tackles in football in Jason Peters, and a defense that I thought was learning a new system and figuring out how they were going to grow into it.
I tell you, the team that they reminded me of a little bit, and I know this is a reach, but when the Dallas Cowboys, they sort of back in Jimmy Johnson’s early years they kind of went from 1 15 to about 7 9 and something and then go on to a little bit of their Super Bowl runs.
I think it’s a young team, a lot of weapons. I don’t think you necessarily have to have that ‘sure, I can beat you in any man to man coverage’ kind of receiver on the outside, because of the way he spreads the field and because with a weapon like LeSean McCoy and Zach Ertz and some of the guys that they have.
So I just look at this as a team with a lot of young talent. We really like Mychal Kendricks last year, watching him play. So, I don’t know, and to some extent I think they’re probably the biggest favorite, in my mind, to win their division, which gets them in the playoffs and gives them a chance.
Is it safe to say then that you’re basing a decent amount of it on the fact that Chip Kelly is now going to be in his second year and one more year of all the players playing in that system will benefit them?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I mean, I’ve got to think that he probably had about 60 percent of that offense or his system in place. It probably took months for the players to figure out what the heck was happening to them in practice with that break neck pace that they have out there and blaring music. And it may have taken a month to get their legs back from training camp, the way they were going at it.
But I think now they understood how to train for that a little bit better. They have got to be better prepared for it. I look at them as a team with real potential. I mean, I’m like you, I’m watching Seattle and I’m going, ‘oh, my gosh, where’s the flaw in this team right now?’
But if I had to pick a team to contend with them I like Philadelphia.
AL MICHAELS: I was thinking about Chip Kelly recently and just going back in recent history in the NFL, Bill Walsh had been an assistant, goes to Stanford, comes in with San Francisco and really changes a lot of things.
And then in the ’90s when Mike Shanahan took over in Denver, won the two Super Bowls and he’s being called a mastermind. And then Mike Martz takes over in St. Louis with Dick Vermeil and he’s kind of a mad scientist.
These guys come in, I mean it comes and it goes, but I see Kelly as maybe the next guy down the line here who is going to change a bunch of things and make it very, very interesting.
One thing about Philadelphia is they’re going to be one of the best teams to watch in the league. I don’t know what the record is going to be, but they’re going to be one of the most fun to watch.
For both Al and Cris and obviously it’s a provincial question about the Broncos and I know neither of you predict wins or losses or whatever, but what is your assessment of the team this year as you look at Welker possibly being out for a long time and our punter being not available for the first four weeks and I notice, Al, in your introduction, said that the San Francisco-Denver game and in October might be a prelude to the Super Bowl, I know you’re not predicting that, but would both of you give us an assessment of the Broncos as they head into the season.
AL MICHAELS: Well, briefly, I’ll let Cris take the majority here, but the roster is good. You look at the players, top to bottom and everybody’s going to have injuries and right now they have got a situation with Wes Welker, we don’t know when he can play or how much he can play this season. You’ve got Manning for starters. I mean he’s still pretty good as we all know. Love the coaching staff. It’s, what happened in the Meadowlands in February I look at as an aberration. Got off to a terrible start and could never recover.
But this is a good team. We know this is a good team and we saw how good they were up until the end of January last year. So again without predicting wins or losses, I would be really surprised if this team wasn’t in the hunt.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I’m not ready to say they’re going to go undefeated. I heard a few of those predictions. But when I look at this team, I think defensively they’re going to be so much better than they were a season ago and I think they’re offensive line will be so much better than it was in the Super Bowl.
To lose Ryan Clady is to lose one of the true superstars on this team. Vaughn Miller, hopefully being back and a hundred percent and healthy. DeMarcus Ware, what I saw of him in preseason earlier this year I thought looked like he had his legs back underneath him. Aqib Talib. T.J. Ward. T.J. Ward’s guy that’s going to allow them to do so much around the line of scrimmage, blitzing, coverage, play middle of the field, team him with [Rahim] Moore back there and I actually like Bradley Roby, he was one of the guys I liked coming out of college.
I know he’s got to keep his head on straight and do all that, but as a young corner, I look at this team now flipping Orlando Franklin back into guard, being able to take Chris Clark to the right tackle, and play Ryan Clady at left tackle, the protection is going to be so much better than what we saw in the Super Bowl. I don’t want to be ugly about it, but the offensive line just could not hold up against Seattle’s pass rush in that game.
For Michele. Michele, at the top of the call you mentioned the Thanksgiving game in San Francisco. I believe, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re a native Californian. Can you speak about that game and if that influences your excitement or if it’s just a great matchup to begin with.
MICHELE TAFOYA: Well, I’m excited because it’s a great matchup. I am originally from California. I grew up commuting to 49er games from Manhattan Beach, California up to, well not quite San Francisco, but about there, just into Candlestick there, and so, yeah, that’s the way I grew up. My dad died a few years ago he was a 49ers fan and raised us that way.
However, the beauty of being in this business for me is that I don’t have any emotional attachments to any teams any more. I find that far more relaxing and far less emotional distress in my life.
So, there’s a little bit of, yeah, this is the team I grew up watching and I love coming to the Bay Area, but really it’s all about this matchup and, I hate to use this phrase, but no love lost between these two teams. It’s just that it carries a bit more intensity than your average game, so that’s what I’m thrilled about.
Cris, a little off topic, but your son being named the captain at Notre Dame yesterday and I know he went through quite a bit in terms of injuries over the course of his career, but just how proud are you that he’s got to this point to be a captain there after everything he went through?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: More than a little bit, as you can imagine. To see the C on the jersey of your son at Notre Dame is just an amazing thing. I can remember when he got recruited there and we were walking down the tunnel and you could sort of see this beacon of light out there that was Notre Dame field. And he said, ‘what do you think, dad?’ And I wanted to say, ‘what do I think? What are you nuts?’ This is Notre Dame, the greatest college players in the history of the world walked through this tunnel out on to that field. And this is where you should go. And this is awesome.
But I had said, well, I don’t know, ‘Austin, what do you think?’ And in fact from that moment and, you know, we all live at the mercy of social media these days and everybody has comments about your son and positive and negative and you read all that stuff and you try and calm your wife down whenever there’s something that somebody says that’s not so nice.
But wearing the C is going to cap it off brilliantly.
Now he said yesterday that you called him with his grandparents at the table too and had it all on speaker phone. So what was that conversation like?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: Well it was great. The funny thing is, now you have opened up the possibility of a dad brag here, so I’ll apologize in advance. But my daughter is captain of the Harvard track team and had been named that just a month or so before and so there was a little teasing going back and forth about it being no big deal, you’re just the second one in the family and all that kind of stuff. But it was his grandparents’ 53rd wedding anniversary, so believe me, it was a night of great celebration and great fun.
My question is for all three of you, Michele, Al and Cris. I know everybody’s pretty excited about Thursday night coming up here, but obviously ending in Denver a pretty compelling matchup three days later. What stands out to you guys, what are you most excited about that matchup as well?
AL MICHAELS: First of all you’ve got two teams each of whom could obviously win the AFC and wind up in the Super Bowl. You got Peyton [Manning] going against Indy. We had that last year in Indy, but the bloom is still on that rose when he goes against the Colts.
You’ve got Andrew Luck who is just a phenomenal young quarterback, obviously, and maybe the heir apparent to the Brady/Manning era. It’s in Denver, always an exciting place to do a game. It’s just a great way to open up the season and we’re very excited about it on every level.
MICHELE TAFOYA: I just look forward to Tony Dungy trying to straddle that line of analyzing the best quarterback he ever coached and then measuring that against the team he used to coach in Indy. No, I’m joking about that a little bit, although it is fun to pick his brain before these games and talk to him about his feelings about those things.
But I agree with Al, it’s the quarterbacks, to me, that make this game. There’s something about Denver and I’m not sure if it’s the altitude or what, but it’s a really fun place to cover a game. The crowd is terrific. To me, any time Peyton’s on the field you can’t blink.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: We talked about Denver a little bit, so I’ll talk a little bit about the Colts, but it’s really exciting for me, I almost kind of got chills when I flipped the tape on and started watching Reggie Wayne again, to see what he’s meant to that organization, the relationship he has with Chuck Pagano, dating all the way back to University of Miami and I thought he looked great. I thought he was running and he looked like Reggie Wayne and he was catching the ball.
Now you pair him with Hakeem Nicks who comes over from the Giants, T.Y. Hilton, that we saw have such a great year last year. Dwayne Allen who is a sensational tight end was out so much of last year with, I think it was a hip injury and of course Andrew Luck, who, if there is the next great one, you know, maybe we’re debating between Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, and I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out, but you know, he’s certainly in that conversation and going against the multi MVP Peyton Manning in a game with all the emotional ties that we had. I remember when we did the game last time and Peyton is usually one who tries to downplay the emotions that he’s feeling around the game. But he said, when he was flying into Indy from Denver, he looked out the window and something he ordinarily never does and just sort of reminisced a little bit about all the glorious days that he had in that city and how much the city had meant to him and his name on children’s hospital.
And so this is a game of great emotion, but I think for the Denver Broncos, this is one anxiously awaited to get a little bit of that taste of the Super Bowl out of their mouths.
Cris, I wanted to follow up on the Eagles question from before. Specifically, how do you expect the Eagles to compensate for the last of DeSean [Jackson]. It seems there’s some ambiguity in that.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: Well, they’re getting Jeremy [Maclin] back, so that’s going to help in a way, but if you watch the way that they play, I don’t want to use all my analogies here, but it’s a little bit like the way you coach soccer. I mean, I had to study that a little bit because I had a couple daughters playing that. And the essence of the game in soccer is you sort of spread the field and create space and create one on one opportunities.
Well, you know, the Philadelphia Eagles spread the field, they put many times they have somebody that will go wide and simply sit at the line of scrimmage on either side of the ball, there’s two people down the field, there’s somebody down the middle of the field or LeSean McCoy is coming out of the back field and they’re creating space for their great players to make plays in the open field.
So, when you get these guys in the open field, and all of a sudden I find myself many times when I’m watching the Eagles going, ‘where is everybody? Where are the defenders?’ Because there’s these big 10, 12 square yards areas on the field where these great players are getting one on one opportunities to operate, so you know, I think it was something that this team kind of really grasped and understood the possibilities of this offense about halfway through the year last year. If I’m not mistaken, it didn’t start a ball of fire and the way that they finished the season and in a close loss in the playoffs and all that kind you have stuff, you just look at teams that are, who has the potential to be even better next year, to take the next step. And to me, anybody that has a second year coach and somebody who is a second year coach like Chip Kelly, you know, I can sign up for that.
Guys, question for Fred. You kind of talked a little bit about the technology and production tools you’re going to go into and develop this year. Is the 3D 360 system back this year and if so do you know what stadiums it’s going to be in in Dallas or anything else and how will that kind of play into your guys telecast?
FRED GAUDELLI: It will be back, the only stadium it’s in right now is AT&T Stadium in Arlington. And we will use it for our lone Cowboy home game as we sit here today, which is September, I believe September 28th in Arlington. But, yes, we will use it and we’re looking forward to the improvements they have said they made from last year to this year.
I know it’s probably a little early, but with the player tracking from what we have seen, it’s pretty cool stuff. How do you kind of see that making its way into a telecast as the league opens that up to the broadcasters and in addition to that, is there anything else exciting from a production tool front this year like on the 4K end or Super Zoom or that kind of thing?
FRED GAUDELLI: Well, as far as the players having the chips, the presentation that the league played for the broadcast partners, I mean, there’s a lot of real-time tracking of players which I think in replay can be good to identify where somebody else can be good. I think one of the really interesting thing is something that we have never really are able to get a handle on during the game is, you know who is in the game at all times. So you know what the player participation is. So if a guy’s on his 95th play, which doesn’t happen often, but has happened, I mean that will be worth noting. That would be worth mentioning. Because that’s a lot of plays to be playing in a football game. So I think that aspect, it’s opened up. I’m not sure about like here’s how fast he runs, I don’t think we could do that now, we could have done that 10 years ago. We choose not to do it because to say somebody’s running 20 miles an hour doesn’t really leave a lasting impression upon you when you’re used to seeing cars going over 200 in NASCAR and Indy Car and things of that nature. But I think that we’re all going to find some use I guess that perhaps we didn’t plan on, but I think the ones that stand out so far for me are the ones I just mentioned.
As far as some of the technical tools, we’re going to actually mount a real-time weather station on the cable cam, so now the weather that we’re getting is going to be right from that quarterback’s perspective. So if he’s throwing with the wind, if he’s throwing against the wind, and that information will be tied to the time code stream, not to get too technical here that gets recorded on every camera. So you can go back and say, hey, this pass here that was woefully under thrown into a 25 mile an hour head wind or vice versa.
So I’m pretty interested in what that might present as we get later into the season, if there’s some bad weather stadiums, we’ll have 4K shooting down each side, a 4K in the end zone. So I think we’ll be pretty well quick. The last thing is they’re finally made these ultra-slow motion cameras with a real-time play back like every other camera that’s tied to an EBS. So we’ll hopefully be going to those shortly in the beginning of the season as well.
Question also for Fred. Fred, with fantasy football giving people all these reasons to watch games of teams that they don’t normally follow and that contributing a lot to such successful ratings for Sunday Night Football, how do you guys take into account those viewers who are watching for their fantasy players and what do you guys offer them in broadcast or what’s going to be new this year to serve those fans?
FRED GAUDELLI: Well, I don’t know that we particularly target anything for any group of fans, other than we know that football fans like to know the statistics of their favorite player for fantasy and just because you’re a sports fan. So we have always been pretty aggressive on updating the in game statistics of all the players in the game, especially the popular ones, the ones that everybody has on their fantasy teams. Like LeSean McCoy, Peyton Manning, Calvin Johnson. So we’re always trying to present that as much as the game will allow.
And our additional component, Sunday Night Football Extra has the real-time output of statistics as the game is going. So somebody who wants to know every second where their players might be in this game stand, can get on our companion feed, which has Al, Cris, and Michele, which has the production of Sunday Night Football, but also has some other tools that allow you to kind of customize your experience.
A generic question for both Al and Cris, I’m aware that Washington is not on your Sunday night schedule at all, but the hoopla around the situation of “Redskins,” would both of you talk about, if you were covering a game, what would be your reaction? Would you use Redskins on occasion or strictly use Washington, what’s your feeling on that?
AL MICHAELS: Well, my feeling and I’ve expressed it a couple of times in the past few months, is basically that that is the name of the team. This is not a broadcasting issue so much as it is an issue for Dan Snyder to deal with, which he has. And he is on record. And perhaps the National Football League as a whole.
I’m not sure exactly what I would do, because I don’t have to make that decision right now, because we don’t have the Washington Redskins on our schedule, we could have them in flex, but I think the more we talk about it or the more broadcasters talk about it, the more we become the story and that’s just not the way we do things on Sunday Night Football. We don’t want to be the story. We want the game to be the story.
So that’s basically my feelings about it and I talked about it a number of times over the past couple of months and really nothing’s changed in that regard.
Cris, what’s your feeling?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I’ve already gone on the record on Inside the NFL and said that I would prefer that it be changed. But that’s pretty much what I feel my responsibility is. You know how I feel about it. My job is to serve the viewers of Sunday Night Football. And while I probably would lean towards saying Washington, but if you’ve done three hours of live television before in your life, you tend to know there’s a lot of things going on up there and I don’t want to make political statements with what I do. I don’t do it about politics in general, I try not to do it across the board. I try to service the people that are tuning in to watch the game. I’ve said my piece on it, but as far as the broadcast itself, I just call the game.
DAN MASONSON: Thanks a lot, everyone, that will wrap up our call.
