FanHouse Pat Summerall

Remember back in the last 1980s and early 1990s when Ted Turner spent his fortune buying up old films and "colorizing" them?

ESPN plans to do the same thing when they re-broadcast the "Greatest Game Ever Played" this Saturday. The "Greatest Game" was the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants.

The game will celebrate its 50th anniversary on December 28th (not sure why ESPN is deciding to show the game two weeks earlier) and is credited with turning the NFL into a national passion. It was nationally televised on NBC and was the league's first ever sudden-death overtime game.

Fifteen members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame were in that game: Johnny Unitas, Sam Huff, Gino Marchetti, Frank Gifford, Don Maynard, Raymond Berry, Art Donovan, Rosey Brown, Lenny Moore, Andy Robustetti, Emlen Tunnell and Jim Parker. Hall of Famer Weeb Ewbank was head coach of the Colts; Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry were coordinators for the Giants.

We found out yesterday that Brett Favre will be the face of Madden '09. Today, courtesy of Awful Announcing, we find out whose voices we will hear doing the broadcast on the game.

Madden NFL 09 will also feature a network-inspired broadcast presentation. Players will benefit from the authentic football knowledge of an in-booth play-by-play and color commentary team featuring Cris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond. In addition, numerous graphical enhancements have been made, including realistic weather and grass, sleeker player models and exterior stadium views.

That's kind of big news. First off, it pretty much confirms the Hammond/Collinsworth team on NFL Network (imagine Bryant Gumbel on the game). Second, it takes us away from having John Madden and Pat Summerall/Al Michaels in our ears.

Apparently John Madden will be in the game in some form (I mean, it is the 20th anniversary edition and Brett Favre is on the cover) but it hasn't been revealed.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is the worst of all possible news. Well, not the worst, I mean Denis Potvin could have taken the job, but HARRY NEALE! Okay, I've tried to remain calm while management wound their way through multiple difficult off-season personnel issues, spending hours trying to piece together just what it was that happened behind the scenes of the Drury/Briere negotiations. I refused to nit-pick over the seeming lack of movement to tweak this roster with trades/free agents.

But hiring Harry Neale makes me truly question the direction of this franchise!!@$

Excuse me while I regress to a 14 year-old's level of punctuation. Having Neale run color for the Leafs was one of the few areas where I could pity them and hence, humanize them just a little bit, as opposed to seeing them as the implacable, red-skinned insectoid monsters from hell (or, at least, New Jersey) that they are underneath their illusion projecting systems. Paul Maurice even looks like he used to work for Yoyodine Propulsion Systems.

Seriously, though, I've given Harry Neale a lot of grief over the years and felt he should have retired earlier in the decade. Where once there was a great hokcey color man, I've felt, there is no longer. Frankly the Sabres should not be using HNiC's cast-offs. There are few, if any, people associated with your favorite sports team that you spend more time with than the guys who call the games. All of my memories of being a Yankee fan, in a former, regrettable life, center around, not the images and the plays themselves, but the rotation of Frank Mercer, Bill White and Phil Rizzuto through the broadcast booth. If Pat Summerall and John Madden weren't calling a Giants game, I'd seriously consider turning the sound, or the game, off.

And, honestly it's the same way today with the Sabres. Watching them on someone else's local feed (especially if that local feed is from Boston) is like listening to three hours of nails on a chalk-board. Players come and go (and in Buffalo they go in dramatic fashion), coaches get fired and ownership changes hands, but the guys behind the mics are nearly eternal.

I used to pity the enemy... now I are one.

Ta,