ABC Knew It Had a Laugher

While the Yankees and A’s traded fastballs on Fox Monday night, two once-great football teams served up a hanging curveball on ABC.

The Dallas Cowboys, at 0-4, hosting their nemesis, the Washington Redskins, also at 0-4?

In prime time?

With the three-time defending World Series champions trying to stave off playoff elimination at the same time on another network?

If you’re ABC, you had to play it for laughs, if only to keep from crying. Forget the history and the Super Bowls and Billy Kilmer against Roger Staubach and Clint Longley on Thanksgiving Day. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a Monday Night Football crew with a professional comedian on the roster--or at least that’s what it says in the ABC Sports promotional literature.

Tony Banks, Anthony Wright, Marty Schottenheimer, Daniel Snyder--for Dennis Miller, this was the mother lode, hand-delivered to his bedroom suite by room service. What more could he ask for, save for the Cowboy mascot and his horse nearly trampling the Cowboy kicker during pregame warmups?

Well, that actually happened, along with Banks fumbling his first snap of the game ... and Redskin rookie Fred Smoot intercepting a pass and injuring himself on the same play ... and the Cowboys and the Redskins combining to produce a point a quarter through three quarters along with this head-shaking graphic with fewer than five minutes left in the third period:

Yankees 5, A’s 3.

Cowboys 3, Redskins 0.

This was found comedy of the first degree, yet on the unofficial Monday Night laugh-o-meter, Miller wound up trailing, in no particular order, Al Michaels, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Jason Alexander, Dan Fouts, Anthony Robbins, Richard Simmons, Tony Dorsett, John Riggins, Joe Theismann and the guys in the ABC truck, who, frankly, ought to be writing for Leno.

Behind the scenes, ABC staffers knew you couldn’t take any of this seriously, which led to a very funny intro segment featuring Simmons in glittered tank-top and shorts demonstrating football fundamentals for the benefit of Dallas quarterback Wright (“Anthony! Look at the ball! Pass the ball!”) and Dr. Ruth offering both teams useful advice (“You can score without perfection”) and words of encouragement from real-life self-help guru Robbins and Alexander’s fictional counterpart Bob Patterson, who reminded Emmitt Smith that “The only thing standing between you and goal line is you. And the goal line.”

Finally, saying what the rest of the country was thinking, an incredulous Alexander added: “And these guys are playing each other on national television? Good lord.”

Like a good warmup act at the Comedy Store, the intro loosened up the audience, set the mood, left you wanting more of the same. And early on, Miller seemed ready for the moment, noting how Native Americans have protested the use of the nickname “Redskins” over the years and that “things have gone so bad in the Big D this year that as I entered the stadium tonight, I saw a picket line of guys in 10-gallon hats and spurs protesting Dallas’ use of the nickname ‘the Cowboys.”’

Then, the Redskins kicked off and Miller slipped into deep backpedal, tiptoeing gingerly around the sad sacks in the silver and burgundy helmets, as is his usual gee-whiz-Dave-Campo-said-hi-to-me approach.

Shortly after Eric Dickerson mused that “Father Time has caught up with Emmitt Smith,” Miller, not wanting to miss out on lunch with Smith on his next trip to Dallas, gushed over a four-yard gain: “Emmitt still looks pretty good!”

Similarly, a nice block Dallas by offensive lineman Larry Allen was, in Miller’s view, “a true testament to his greatness.”

This was a game that cried for Howard Cosell muttering about this a-bom-i-na-tion being foisted upon the sensibilities of any ser-i-ous student of the game. Or maybe Dandy Don singing “The Party’s Over” just before opening kickoff. Instead, we had Miller offering Campo congratulations for a miserably played 9-7 victory because “Davy’s a good man.”

It’s a good thing Michaels and Fouts were there to provide backup, aided by age-old footage of classic Cowboy-Redskin matchups. After a commercial break, highlights of Dorsett and Riggins and Theismann would flash across the screen and Michaels would push tongue into cheek and inform viewers “just tuning in” that this is just what they had missed, pull up a chair, we have a great game going on.

After watching a tape of Dallas kicker Tim Seder getting nearly run over by a horse during pregame drills, Michaels observed, “Seder would say, ‘That’s horsebleep.”’

Noting the field goal try Seder just missed, Fouts quickly added, “So was his field goal attempt.”

Then, when Seder finally converted a field goal just before halftime, Michaels and Fouts marked the historic occasion thusly:

Michaels: “Houston, we have a field goal.”

Fouts: “Houston, we have a problem!”

And when some third-quarter statistics were displayed on the screen:

Michaels: “Dan, what do you make of these figures?”

Fouts: “Not much.”

Again, it was all ABC could do to keep from crying. After some more Dallas-Washington lowlights set to a popular Broadway tune, Michaels drolly informed his audience that the music was a song “from ‘Damn Yankees.’ And that’s what we’re going to say when we look at the ratings tonight.”