NFL Network Hiring Bob Papa
After the NFL Network did something really bad, they did something really good and about to do something even better. The really bad was when they hired Bryant Gumble to do their games on Thursday night’s. The first good thing they did was fire Gumble because he was just unwatchable. Even better than that is they are hiring the Giants radio play-by-play man Bob Papa, according to Newsday. Papa has been with the Giants the last two seasons and heard on WFAN. He also does boxing, but none of this should interfere with the Giants schedule. The article did not state when the announcement will take place.
Other candidates were believed to have included Spero Dedes and Tom Hammond.
Congrats to Bob Papa, or the one-and-only Bob Poppper as Mayer Bloomberg called him while the Keys to the City were being distributed. At least the games aired on the NFL Network will be watchable. Unfortunately, they still have so many more characters to fill the remainder of the week which won’t make anyone run out and sign up for the channel.
On June 21, the Wall Street Journal broke the story about the NFL Network and ESPN merging in order “to end an embarrassing dispute that kept live pro football games out of many homes”. I didn’t mention it at the time because it had nothing to do with the Giants, but I’m mentioning it now while were discussing the NFL Network already. It’s still somewhat current if you missed it. The article listed a few possible ways that the two could merge. It goes to show you that the NFL handled the NFL Network as an absolute joke. They tried to out-muscle even more powerful cable providers with a channel with only 8 games. The rest of it is filled with Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson talking to Dion Sanders, and who wants to watch that. The NFL was unable to get games to their fans which is the worst part about it, and they were too stubborn to negotiate with the cable providers. The NFL has to make a more than desirable product if they want to out-muscle the cable giants. So it failed, and now they have to merge and bring on top talent play-by-play announcers to succeed. Remember Giants fans, we would’ve never got to watch the Week 17 game between the Pats and Giants if the pressure didn’t come down from the politicians. That was an NFL Network game that we got to see because the Patriots were going for a perfect season.
