FanHouse InsideMNF

A look inside Monday Night Football.

In the bowels of the Metrodome before the Bears-Vikings Monday Night Football game, I was introduced to Michael Wilbon of ESPN and the Washington Post. Knowing that Wilbon isn't a fan of blogs, I asked him to explain why.

I was surprised that his response was more about his own personal preferences than about bashing bloggers, although he did a little bit of that, too.

"I'm old," the 49-year-old Wilbon told me repeatedly. "You build up your reading habits over a lifetime."

Wilbon explained that he has always been a newspaper man and that he will always believe that if, for instance, there's breaking sports news in Boston, he's much more likely to get the full story from reading the Boston Globe than he is from reading any blog. In Wilbon's view, the Globe has access and blogs don't, and therefore the Globe will have information that blogs won't.

Wilbon also brought out a lot of the usual criticisms of blogs -- no editing, no standards, no accountability, but at that point a couple of (younger) ESPN staffers sitting with him interrupted to point out that he was painting blogs with too wide a brush. At that point, Wilbon mentioned Deadspin and The Big Lead, and he seemed to realize that those blogs are higher in quality than the ones he dismisses as lacking in standards.

I don't think Wilbon is ever going to feel fully comfortable with blogs, just like I don't think Shirley Povich ever would have been fully comfortable with sports writers arguing on TV. But I think he's more like the dad who doesn't understand the music his kids listen to than the dad who organizes boycotts of that music.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

During a Monday Night Football game, the ESPN production truck is a frantic place with 10 people monitoring 110 TV screens, which show not only the live feeds of all 31 cameras ESPN uses (with the name of the cameraman under each screen) but also dozens of replays that the producer might decide to show.

When an official ruled a catch at the sideline incomplete in the second quarter of tonight's Vikings-Bears game, producer Jay Rothman immediately yelled instructions about showing the proper replay. "Get the end of the play," Rothman shouted. "We don't need to see the ref." Any time the Vikings faced third down, producers reminded cameramen that if the Vikings had to punt on the next play, they needed to be ready to focus on Devin Hester.

The announcers spend the commercial breaks in communication with the truck. Play-by-play man Mike Tirico knew there was an injury at one point but wasn't sure who was down; he asked and someone in the truck told him it was Bears defensive end Mark Anderson.

The hardest job may be that done by the two ESPN staffers working on the ESPN Deportes Spanish broadcast. They don't have any control over the camera angles they get – and their announcers aren't even in the stadium, instead working from ESPN's headquarters in Bristol.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

In one corner of the ESPN Monday Night Football production truck sits Steve Hirdt, executive vice-president of the Elias Sports Bureau. He is, on Monday nights, a very busy man.

If there's a number spoken by one of the announcers or flashed on the screen during a game, Hirdt, more likely than not, came up with it. For 26 years, he has worked on the Monday Night Football broadcasts, first on ABC and then on ESPN.

During tonight's game, Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was a frequent topic of conversation among the announcers, and Hirdt, sitting in the production truck, was looking for statistical angles to use in discussing Peterson. He'd look something up on his computer or within the reams of paper sitting on his desk, then turn to an ESPN producer and say something like, "Do you want something on Peterson's 296-yard game? Mike [Tirico] might talk about that."

Hirdt told me that he's not a statistician by training – he was a journalism major in college, and that's what got him prepared for the job. Hirdt's job is really not much different than Ron Jaworski's: Hirdt uses stats and Jaworski uses film study, but they're both analyzing the game.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

I noted earlier that the physical size of the operation ESPN brings to town for Monday Night Football goes far beyond what you see on TV.

But the guys you do see on TV -- announcers Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser -- are, at least at the Metrodome, crammed into a tiny booth. They look like they're doing some good, old-fashioned 1950s phone booth cramming.The booth is so small that when viewers saw them on camera before the game, they were in a different booth because the main broadcast booth wasn't big enough for a cameraman and the TelePrompTer Kornheiser used for his opening.

Ordinarily there are six people in ESPN's booth -- the three on-air guys, plus a statistician and two spotters, one who helps Tirico see basic information like who made a tackle, and one who goes over more detailed Xs and Os with Jaworski like what type of coverage the secondary was in. Tonight they're not able to fit everyone in, though, so Jaworski's spotter is in a separate booth. Jaws can push a button on his mic and talk to him through his headset without the viewers at home hearing it.

Oh, and if you're wondering what kind of qualifications a person would need to have to help Jaws with Xs and Os, Jaworski's spotter was a quarterback at Bryant College.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is on the field at the Metrodome in pregame warmups, and if what he's practicing before the game is what he's planning to do during the game, Bears return man Devin Hester shouldn't expect to touch the ball much today. Kluwe is standing in the middle of the field and booting his warmup punts out of bounds.

Considering that Kyle Orton is the starting quarterback for the Bears tonight, that seems like the right move: The Bears' offense isn't likely to put many points on the board, meaning the Vikings just need to avoid letting Hester beat them.

As for kickoffs, I turned to the resident kicking expert, Mike Black, a former Boise State kicker who now works as Mike Tirico's spotter on Monday Night Football. He said the Vikings will squib their kickoffs to avoid Hester.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

Visiting the ESPN Monday Night Football booth a couple of hours before kickoff, I asked play-by-play man Mike Tirico what kind of preparation he does before the games, and he showed me a stack of incredibly detailed, color-coded charts that have the names of every player on the Bears and Vikings followed by stats and personal information.

I assumed he must have had a very talented assistant, but no, he produces the charts all by himself: "I set up my own Excel program," Tirico told me.

In addition to MNF, Tirico has his own ESPN Radio show and covers the NBA and golf, and he has two kids, but he finds enough time to prepare that he has watched every play of the Bears' and Vikings' last few games to get him ready for tonight. (He uses the DirecTV Short Cuts to save time.) He also says he reads every article written about the teams he's covering.

How much of all that actually gets on the air? Tirico only puts the best stuff into his charts, and he says he's lucky if 25 percent of what's on the charts actually gets on the air.

A look inside Monday Night Football.

The most striking thing about ESPN's work when it comes to town for Monday Night Football -- work that I'm observing in Minneapolis today -- is the physical size of the operation.

ESPN has 31 cameras and 20,000 feet of cable running through the Metrodome, and its Monday Night Football production trucks travel 25,000 miles a year.

But the number that stuck out to me is this: There are 325 people in Minneapolis today for ESPN's telecast. I figure the Bears probably brought 50 players and 100 or so other team employees, meaning ESPN likely has more than twice as many people in town for Monday Night Football as the Bears do.

Chuck Foreman is, at least for now, the greatest running back in Minnesota Vikings history. He played in the Pro Bowl five straight years from 1973 to 1977, he led the league in touchdowns twice and he was so good at catching passes out of the backfield that he even led the league in receptions in 1975.

But that "at least for now" part is important, because it seems only a matter of time until Adrian Peterson supplants Foreman as the greatest running back in Vikings history -- as even Foreman seems ready to attest.

At an ESPN-sponsored event in Minneapolis today, in preparation for tonight's Vikings-Bears Monday Night Football game, Foreman said of Peterson, "I can only just say 'wow.' He makes those long runs and when he's in the end zone he's not even breathing hard."

Foreman also called Peterson "a wonderful young man," but he did have one word of caution about Peterson's future. Peterson missed time with injuries in all three of his college seasons and has missed two games this season, and Foreman noted that his old coach used to say that the great running backs are the ones who can withstand the pounding of a full NFL season.

"I'll tell you what Bud Grant told me," Foreman said. "You can have all the talent in the world, but durability equals greatness."