Joe Tessitore settling in for first year of ‘Monday Night Football’
"I do think we’re a different kind of show."
A conversation with Joe Tessitore, the veteran broadcaster, first-year play-by-play voice of ESPN’s Monday Night Football, and proud Boston College alum and dad (his son, John, is a freshman kicker on the football team):
You’ve been well-known, especially to college football and boxing fans, for nearly 20 years now. But there’s a whole different magnitude to being part of Monday Night Football. Has it been what you expected?
Tessitore: The job and broadcast is what I expected. The scrutiny and being under the microscope is what I was told to expect, but until you experience it, it’s like nothing else. The guys I work with are even better than I expected in terms of that commitment and what a joy they are to be with. When you’re on the road together as a crew, you’d better enjoy peoples’ company. You have to want to go out to dinner with them or watch football with them. And this crew really has that. They’re wonderful people. You look forward to seeing everybody.
Monday Night Football has often strived, and not always with success, to match the must-watch event status it had in the ‘70s with Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, and Don Meredith. What is the balance between football and entertainment that you and [analysts] Jason Witten and Booger McFarlane are trying to strike?
Tessitore: I do think we’re a different kind of show. We have a show that is willing to take some risks. We have a show that is a very passion-based broadcast, we’re very passionate about football. Booger is a really unique character. He’s going to be irreverent. He’s going to be fearless. I’ll never forget when [former Louisiana State football coach] Les Miles was on the hot seat — and Booger is LSU through and through — he was out there saying Les Miles should be fired, a change has to happen. That’s not easy when you’re a former star of a team and so infused into the university. And he’s very, very funny, very authentic.
How does Jason Witten, a decorated recent player but a broadcasting novice, fit in to this approach?
Tessitore: [Witten] is obviously growing into it. His football IQ is off the charts. His knowledge of the NFL is off the charts, because there’s little that this guy hasn’t experienced — 15 NFL seasons, 11-time Pro Bowler — he has all of this empirical knowledge built up. The more you spent time with him, you realize he was a franchise quarterback in a tight end’s body in terms of the impact he had, he was an assistant head coach, he was an assistant general manager in a lot of ways. He managed the locker room, he was close to management. …. there’s nothing that comes up during our week of prep that he doesn’t have knowledge about or an opinion about it. Being a pure rookie, of course that’s a challenge, but that’s to be expected for anyone.
I don’t think ESPN executives did him too many favors by raving about his audition. That led to irresistible comparisons to his former teammate, Tony Romo, and Romo was a phenomenon in his first year with CBS that doesn’t come along often.
Tessitore: I think everybody makes this comparison of Witten and Tony Romo. I get it in that they both went from the Dallas Cowboys directly to being in the broadcast booth, but they have nothing in common otherwise. They couldn’t be more different in every way. And the broadcast style couldn’t be any more different. Romo is this rule breaker, this enthusiastic, non-conforming broadcaster, who is so likable because he’s just out there predicting plays and bantering with Jim Nantz, and it’s fun to listen to. Witten is far more of the vein of your classic, CEO, Captain America, upbeat but more structured broadcaster. When he fully matures into this role, he’s more of a Todd Blackledge or Kirk Herbstreit, to make a college comparison. He’s more a senatorial, classic broadcaster. You expect him to have the polish.
Monday’s Patriots-Bills game is your eighth game of the season, the midway point. How would you assess the progress in the booth so far?
Tessitore: We’re better now that we were in Week 1, we’re better now than we were in Week 3, and I thought this past week, even though we had a show last week with a 1-win team [Giants] and 2-win team [Falcons], I thought we had the most cohesive three-man conversation that we’ve had to date. Games earlier this year were games that fit more of my style of play by play, where it’s document what’s happening, build it up, build the anticipation, and then you have some last-minute drama. I thought Wit and Booger had a great broadcast in terms of going back and forth and finding each other in deeper conversation. But we know we have to improve. I have to improve. I’ve done three-man booths before, but never where one of the partners is in his own vehicle [McFarlane observes from the “Boogermobile’’ on the sidelines] and yet is part of the conversation with two of us in the booth. And Wit has done seven real broadcasts in his career and they’re all on Monday Night Football. It’s not like he got reps on a d-level regional 1 o’clock game before doing this. His knowledge and accomplishments are great, but that doesn’t give him TV savvy. That’s something that will come. He’s a natural born leader and the only thing he knows is to work hard and get better.
Bryan Curtis’s detailed profile of you on The Ringer in August generated a lot of reaction. You revealed a lot in that piece, especially about your pride in your Italian-American heritage, and yet not all of the response was positive. How did you handle that?
Tessitore: I don’t have regrets about people understanding my background and who I really am and how I conduct myself. I heard from some people, friends who know me well, who said, ‘Man, Tess, I’m really glad you did that, it showed some people who you are, it’s the truth.’ It’s the first time I really talked about the neighborhood I grew up in, the way I am, how I like to have fun, my ideas on life, how I conduct myself. But if you’re not conditioned for that and you’ve heard me on Saturday night football for 20 years or prime time boxing, it may be a punch in the face, like, ‘Whoa, I didn’t know he was like that.’
I remember asking ESPN, are you sure you want me to be my most authentic self, and it was, ‘Yeah, yeah, of course, you’re heading up Monday Night Football, it’s a huge feature, Bryan is a great writer’ – and he is – ‘so be real with him.’ And I was like, OK, I’ll be real with him. I guess sometimes real isn’t what people are expecting.
You can’t come from where I come from and who I come from and not have that [pride]. Take even the day I’m living right now. I was just shadowing my daughter at boarding school and was sitting in these classes with these Park Avenue blue-blood aristocrats for the last eight hours. I race home to study the two-deep [roster] for the Bills for 15 minutes even if I can, then I’m racing up to BC to drink beer and eat Italian sausage and hang out with my family and watch my son play college football. It’s not a normal life. And then the foundation of my life is that I’m the son of an immigrant who grew up in an Italian neighborhood that would make the “Bronx Tale’’ blush. There’s a lot of dynamics to it. I thought Bryan did a great job with the article and that it just surprised people that I’m not a cookie-cutter play by play guy.
You guys have had some outstanding games this season. Now how are you going to sell this Patriots-Bills game? A Tom Brady-Derek Anderson showdown?
Tessitore: [Laughs] Well, remember, we’re a national game that wraps up the week, so there’s a little bit of freedom to roam there and talk about league matters and other games and players and such. But we’ve been lucky to have compelling games almost every week, so you never know. To have the Drew Brees history making moment where everything stood still, to have the last second Aaron Rodgers heroics, to have all the fabulous finishes we’ve had, Khalil Mack’s debut with the Bears at home, Gruden’s return – they fell off a cliff but we had the night you want to see – the Ryan Fitzpatrick game against Pittsburgh, we went six for six of having good drama and events right out of the gate. We got lucky to start this year.
