ARLINGTON – “Herbie the Hypocrite”?
Kirk Herbstreit is as hard-working and talented as he is insightful, as befits his $18 million per year TV contract, which includes a reported $10 million a season to work alongside Al Michaels on NFL “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon.
Amazon pays the league a stunning $1 billion per season for its piece of the NFL, and happily pockets the massive revenue that comes with the arrangement.
Pivotal in the deal with all of the involved networks is the opportunity to be tied with the Dallas Cowboys, the team that – in terms of being able to print money for itself and its partners – is the crown jewel of the NFL.
In short, Amazon (and Michaels and Herbstreit and all involved) want – no, need – Dallas on “TNF.” …
A fact, that makes “Herbie’s” anti-Cowboys take comically hypocritical.
This weekend, Herbstreit was obliged to read an ESPN promo for tonight’s “Monday Night Football” event starring the 3-6 Cowboys vs. the visiting Texans. Herbstreit did his job … and then veered way off-script..
“Just keep putting Dallas in those high-profile windows,” he said sarcastically. “They just keep losing games. That is a train wreck. … It’s awful.”
We have no bone to pick with Kirk’s private-citizen views on the Cowboys. (They are, objectively, “awful.”) Indeed, in their last five games at AT&T Stadium the Cowboys have trailed by these gaudy deficits: 32 to the Green Bay Packers, 25 to the New Orleans Saints, 22 to the Baltimore Ravens, 38 to the Detroit Lions and 28 to the Eagles. There’s never been a more “awful” stretch in the franchise’s storied history. … and as has been the case for the better part of 35 years we’ve sat in the press box witnessing each and every one of them.
But here are in two ways how Herbie is a hypocrite …
One, as soon as the networks, the advertisers and the audience are completely disinterested in “America’s Team,” “train wreck” or not, the networks, the advertisers and the audience will surely let Herbstreit know about it. And they will assign him to cover a Seahawks-Cardinals game, or whatever.
And two, Herbie was on the call in Week 4 when the Cowboys played the New York Giants on “TNF” on Amazon. And we are racking our brain trying to remember if Kirk promotion of that game between two losers was in any way sour or negative. (We’re kidding; we know it wasn’t.)
But hey, it’s not too late to fix things. Maybe Herbstreit’s boldly derisive remarks will trigger in him a conscientiousness that will cause him to refund the $625,000 check he cashed for covering the “awful” Cowboys on that Thursday night, eh?
