THE SIDELINES : Musburger: I Talk Too Much

Surprise. Brent Musburger agrees with the critics who wish he’d shut up once in a while.

“When I’m watching tapes of a game I did, there are many times when I get tired of the sound of my own voice,” Musburger says in an interview in the June 1 issue of Entertainment Weekly. “I turn the sound off or just shut the damn thing off and walk away.”

Musburger, for years the sports anchor at CBS, was fired by the network the day before he announced the NCAA college basketball final, his final event at CBS. He signed a month later with ABC.

“I don’t care what you put me on,” he says in the interview. “I’ve done more schlock sports than anybody. I’ve done the Human Fly, a guy walking on airplanes.”

Musburger also acknowledges that he may over-hype events that he covers. “If I’m not going to be enthusiastic about it, who’s going to be?” he asks. “It would be virtually impossible for someone who shares the responsibility for making an event a success to be a pure journalist.”