Gruden good fit in booth
It's OK to turn up the volume on "Monday Night Football" broadcasts this season. Jon Gruden has joined the booth, and everything is back to normal.
Gruden was insightful and witty Thursday -- it was not Monday because it's the NFL preseason -- while calling the shots for the Arizona Cardinals-Pittsburgh Steelers game.
After he was fired as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Jan. 16, Gruden said he would coach again whether "it's the NFL, college, high school or, maybe, I'll just be the best damn flag football coach in the history of Florida." For now, though, he's a broadcaster, and it appears he'll be a good one.
The best thing about seeing Gruden in the booth is that Tony Kornheiser is not there. Kornheiser offered little insight on the games, and his analysis was corny. He inspired use of the mute button on the remote control.
In a blog for Yahoo! Sports, Matthew J. Darnell said Gruden fits his new role.
"I don't want to make this another 'Kornheiser is awful' post," Darnell wrote. "The reason Gruden is going to be a stud in the 'MNF' booth is because the second he took the job, he was already two things that Kornheiser never was: comfortable and knowledgeable."
• WHAT'S IN A NAME -- The four-team United Football League is trying to earn respect from fans and the media, but its lame team nicknames and cartoonish uniform designs are not helping.
UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue had a news conference Monday and announced the Las Vegas franchise will be called the Locomotives. Even Jim Fassel, the Locomotives coach, admitted the nickname is strange.
But Huyghue topped that by naming the San Francisco franchise the California Redwoods.
"The Redwoods, large, strong trees native to California, symbolize many traits the UFL and the California franchise plan to embody," Huyghue said with a straight face. "The Redwoods and the UFL are reaching for the stars and are eco-friendly."
The Florida franchise will be called the Orlando Tuskers. A tusker is a wild boar, a species that used to run wild all over the state and can be found in the Everglades. It's getting tougher to take this league seriously.
• ALCOHOL ABUSE -- Spilling a beer is a shameful mistake. Throwing a beer is an unforgivable waste, and an idiot move, and it happened this week at Wrigley Field, where a fan threw a beer on Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino.
"As a Chicago-area resident I'm supposed to be mortified by the idiot who dumped a beer on Victorino," Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey wrote. "Trust me, I'm wwwwwaaaaaaaay more embarrassed by the Cubs' play."
Morrissey said the incident was no indictment of Chicago fans: "Idiots are everywhere. We can't have an idiot kill-off, as attractive as the idea might be. There will be no government-sponsored idiot hunt for the purpose of thinning the herd. And unless the Cubs and other sports teams decide to stop selling beer, there's no way to stop bad behavior."
COMPILED BY MATT YOUMANS LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
