Journalism Left Behind in Super Bowl Broadcast

DAVIE, Fla. -- Give CBS broadcaster Boomer Esiason full credit. The former University of Maryland quarterback has never been shy about expressing an opinion going all the way back to when he registered for classes in College Park under his given name, Norman, so many years ago. The day after Super Bowl XLI, his prediction on Peyton Manning, uttered in the hours and minutes before the opening, electrifying kickoff, turned out just the way he said it would.

"There's a lot riding on this for both quarterbacks," Esiason said a few hours into Sunday's pre-game show. "If (Peyton Manning) loses this game, they'll say he choked in the big one. This is a defining moment for the great Peyton Manning. I think he'll be the MVP. I think he'll be patient early and he'll make plays. I think he'll hoist the trophy and be the most valuable player."

Obviously, Esiason hardly was going out on a fragile limb in anointing Manning the hero of the game before it had even started. It was a fairly safe observation on a day when CBS also took a safe and mostly sound approach to its entire Super Bowl production, from four-hour pre-game to four-hour game and post-game.

Many of the stories CBS told in the hours leading up to the game were rather predictable as well, and none of them exactly broke much new ground.

Chicago running back Thomas Jones spent all week telling reporters about growing up as the son of a coal-mining mother, for example. We've known for months that Bill Walsh has been battling leukemia, though at least it was comforting to hear his story and see that he clearly looks and sounds very much like a defiant survivor.

And Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Hines Ward's trip to South Korea last spring to learn about his own roots had also been the subject of numerous articles, including a brilliant piece in Sports Illustrated, over the last year. But CBS pushed golden girl Katie Couric to the forefront on this one, even if her only visible contribution seemed to be in providing a voice-over to the script. She didn¿t go to Korea, her producer did.

Couric did show up on the football set and was the object of much fawning from the pre-game crew, with Shannon Sharpe gushing, "Hey, I'm on TV with Katie Couric" and Esiason adding, " suddenly I'm feeling a little bit more important with her sitting here."

Hey, I sat in a CBS trailer watching it all on a big screen TV with Bob Schieffer over on the next couch eating pretzels and corn chips. No big deal, fellas, though Couric and Schieffer both could have served this mostly feel-good pre-game show far better by suggesting a much larger dollop of journalism be inserted into the mix. But sadly, CBS simply chose to ignore some of the biggest stories of the week in its Sunday coverage.

There was no mention, for example, of the growing number of retired NFL players furious at the league and their own union for what they perceive to be callous indifference to the plight of many of their less fortunate teammates who need better insurance and disability coverage and increased pensions.

One of the more heavily attended news conferences at the Super Bowl media center last week involved the announcement of an ongoing on-line auction organized by former Green Bay lineman Jerry Kramer. Many former players, including former Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka, have donated some of their most treasured memorabilia in an attempt to raise money for old players in dire need of help, which ought to be a major embarrassment to the league and the union.

Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end and coach of the only Bears Super Bowl champion, even made an emotional appeal Thursday at the news conference to both entities to do a better job in taking care of their own. So what if he's now employed by ESPN? Shouldn't CBS at least have sent a camera crew over to get Ditka on tape, or better yet, bring Da Coach on the set Sunday as one of the greatest Bears' icons in history and talk to him about the problem live on game day?

Three days before the big game, The N.Y. Times and Boston Globe also broke an important story on the health problems of former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson. Only 34 and a key man in three Patriots three Super Bowl victories this decade, Johnson was quoted as saying that Patriots coach Bill Belichick forced him to practice against medical advice a few days after he had sustained a concussion in a preseason game, and that he's been dealing with the consequences ever since.