re: Pollack, Falica, Rinaldi, and Wojcechowski all gone from Gameday. Reboot time?

I’d rather them have 2 hours to discuss every game of meaning as opposed to rushing through 5 segments as fast as possible.

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They need to bring back Fowler,

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I'd love to see Fowler return to Gameday, but does he want to?

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I'd love to see Fowler return to Gameday, but does he want to?

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No

I stopped watching with McAfee. It’s like watching the Andy Cohen of ESPN. If he is at a school he doesn’t dare say bad things about their team. He is weak. It’s all about him being loud and annoying. Game day was good at one point. But if he is on it, there is no hope of it rebounding.

I dont hate Reece but he does sometimes come off as a smug little shite. Fowler is just such a great presence and has such great command. When he left to do commentary it fell off (likewise i thought Reece was really good as the studio guy)

Reece sucks

I think they could change the faces on the regular crew too because some of them weren't that good like Desmond Howard (all he does is laugh), Corso should retire, Herby probably ain't going anywhere, and Reece could be replaced with someone else like bring back Fowler.

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Fowler + Kirk + Corso + Guest = winning formula

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Fowler ain’t coming back. No way Corso can carry two hours in his condition.

In my opinion the problem is the search for expanded viewership. It appears that everything ESPN does on its flagship programming is designed to get more people to watch. The problem is that the attempts to expand the audience make the core product worse. So there's this tension that the core audience largely wants to stay focused on the topic at hand (in this case football), but the suits in charge want the program to offer something for everyone. The end result is an incoherent program that doesn't really expand reach and makes the experience worse for the core audience.

The pre-game programs are not the only offenders. How many of us watch games, only to be subjected to the narrativization of the call. Instead of calling the game on its own merits and as it develops, the story of the game is told through pre-thought narratives. Team A's quarterback Player X is the key to the game. "Player X is winning the game for his team" and every play is called to serve that narrative. Or the opposite, "Player X isn't performing how he needs to" so the entire game is called within that context. I think most of us would just like a game called and analyzed briefly where appropriate on its own terms. I also don't want to have the game relegated to a second screen so we can interview some idiot or whatever.

Bottom line is refining sports programming for the core audience is not happening because it is thought by management to be in conflict with expanding the audience. I maintain that if the pre-show or game is done really well, the most amount of people will both watch and enjoy it. Instead of approaching it as we need to add non-sports or sports adjacent stuff for people that don't like sports, why not just do the sports stuff really, really well? That would seem to me to be the best way to try and convert casual or non-fans.