Carton Critiques NFL Today's Shift to Conversational TV

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
Love me two times, eight days a week. Something like that, I don't know. Carton Show, Big Mac.
Doopey doopey, I saw Bill Cowher earlier today talking about how the NFL Today this year is going to try to become much more conversational.
Okay, sure you are, right? By the way, if they want to be conversational, they should hire Bart Scott back and hire Shannon Sharpe back and then let them do their thing and talking about football. That's what I would do. But instead, who do you have? You have Nate Berlson still there, James Brown still there, Bill Cowher still there, and I think Russell Wilson is now part of the NFL Today, right? That just doesn't sound like it's going to lead to casual conversational pre-gaming. Am I wrong about that?
I don't know. It seems like every guy is going to get there eight seconds. It's going to be very scripted and old and kind of do what it's always done. It does well. But like if you want to be, like I always said, Bart Scott was there for a year. Shannon was there for a few years. What I always said, and Shannon and I talked about a few times, I've talked to Bart about it. If you took their Saturday meeting when they're not under a strict timeline, funniest room in New York City. But then when you tell guys who are really personable, I need you in an eight second sound bite, you know, just not as good. But we'll see. We'll see if the NFL team becomes more conversational. Yeah.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:35)
I always thought Shannon Sharpe was great when he was on there.

**Craig Carton** (1:39)
They didn't, the problem with Shannon Sharpe in that show is that they didn't allow him to expand on a thought. And where Shannon is, I think, brilliant, is when you just allow him to go off on a topic. Now, when you tell a guy like that, you need to basically rehearse and memorize what your take is going to be, then you're not using that guy at the best of what he is. Same with Bart Scott, who, by the way, is going to be here on Wednesday. You want Bart Scott to be extemporaneous.
Like, no joke, not to promote my own stuff, go look at the clips of Bart Scott on my podcast, The Little Wayne. That's Bart Scott at his best.
When you tell a guy like Bart or Shannon Sharpe, you have to give me something in eight seconds and, oh, by the way, Bill's going to say A, Nate's going to say B, you're going to say C. Well, then what's the point of having them there? You've robbed them of their personality, and that's what set those guys apart. They've got great personalities.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:45)
Well, and the guys they added, like I don't know if Matt Ryan is still a part of it.

**Craig Carton** (2:50)
He's not because he became like the team president or something.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:53)
And then JJ. Watt moved on. JJ.

**Craig Carton** (2:55)
Watt became Tony Romo's replacement.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:57)
Yeah, and I don't know if Russell Wilson is very entertaining.

**Craig Carton** (2:59)
Well, he's going to have a chance to be.

**Chris McMonigle** (3:01)
Yeah.

**Craig Carton** (3:01)
But I can tell you this, by default, he's the most entertaining guy they got.

**Chris McMonigle** (3:05)
For sure.

**Craig Carton** (3:06)
Right?

**Chris McMonigle** (3:06)
I think so.

**Craig Carton** (3:07)
Bill Cowher obviously knows more football than anybody, but he's not entertaining, and I like Bill. Like, did you ever watch Bill Cowher and go, he's funny?

**Chris McMonigle** (3:16)
Most of the time, it was when the other guys were getting him riled up. That's the stuff that would make it funny.

**Craig Carton** (3:21)
Right. But it's not funny because it's not natural.

**Chris McMonigle** (3:23)
And Bart, on SNY, I don't know if Bart still does the SNY.

**Craig Carton** (3:27)
He does with Willie Colon.

**Chris McMonigle** (3:28)
They're great.

**Craig Carton** (3:29)
It's great because they're allowed to expand upon their thought because they're not up against the clock. So, anyway, I saw Bill say it. I hope they do. I find all those pregame shows to be very hard to watch and not funny. There's nothing worse, in my opinion. Well, there's obviously worse things, but you know what I'm saying. When five, there's five or six guys on a set, and one guy says something that he thinks might be funny, and everybody laughs at it, but it ain't funny.
That's, those are NFL pregame shows. That's what they are, to be fair. Like, I worked for Fox for three years at FS1. Did I ever think anything that Terry Bradshaw would say was so funny that I'm going to fall off my chair and laugh at it? I did not. I think he's entertaining, but fall off your chair funny?