By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

We’ll save you the effort of checking out the NFL Network’s attempt at a grassroots campaign (a.k.a Iwantthenetwork.com).

Instead, in the wake of the Network’s Saturday night, all-time worst, American, professional TV broadcast, we’d like urge a creative-type to snag this site and start a new petition: GetRidof TheNFLNetwork.

The Network No One Can Get is officially the Network No One Should Want – at least for its live game coverage (which, it turns out, you can pirate fairly easily).

Saturday’s game at Atlanta between the Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys started off being called by Bumbling Bryant Gumbel and ex-coach and renowned crier, Dick Vermeil, who had unlistenable voice problems.

By the start of the third quarter (after an otherwise entertaining 21-21 game) there had been three booth line-up changes, as Marshall Faulk was first sent to the side of Gumbel and Vermeil to help alleviate the need for Vermeil to use his fading-in-and-out, painfully, laryngitic voice. On the intro into the second half, Neon Deion Sanders magically appeared in the booth with Gumbel and Faulk as Gumbel stumbled through an explanation that Vermeil was standing by in case he was needed.

Needed for what? To get more hot tea for himself?

“Dick was playing hurt,” Gumbel explained, omitting the obvious that his Network is similarly sidled.

How Vermeil – who was making his NFLN debut in subbing for dearly missed Cris Collinsworth, who has NBC weekend duties – was allowed to get into the booth in the first place is the chief question. But hardly the only one.

Did anybody happen to speak with Dick before the game? Because, I dunno, the analyst would seem to need two things: a tie and a voice. Without the former, you can still squeeze by – without the latter, you are completely useless and a complete embarrassment to your network. (All this, while the awful Coors commercials with Vermeil answering mock questions from moron Coors drinkers is run during game breaks.)

Not only doesn’t the NFL Network not look good now, it’s quite possible that the league’s breakthrough media outlet is in danger of de-legitimatizing the very product that its supposed to glorify (and milk) for every valuable penny.

The Gumbel experiment has been disastrous and the overall game productions have been well below the standards set by the REAL networks like NBC, FOX and CBS. While some of the ‘Net’s other programming is passable, there is still the distinct feel that the NFLN is slightly beyond “Garth and Wayne” and miles behind ESPN.

Saturday night’s disgrace should be the final straw and let’s hope new commissioner Roger Goodell – after he’s done fixing the Cincinnati Bengal Criminal Colony – has the good sense to call up his TV network’s president, Steve Bornstein, and read him the riot act. The league that has prided itself on doing everything with class and marketing savvy has suddenly found itself being dragged down by a not-ready-for-primetime production.

. . . We have no way of checking such things, but we are willing to guess that the Gumbel, Faulk and Sanders booth became the first all-African American broadcast threesome in the history of major, televised, professional sports. If you are going to make that type of history, it might be better to do it with some fanfare, instead of some egg on your face.

Both Sanders and Faulk work for the NFL Network and were in-stadium as part of the pre-, half- and post-game crew.

. . . The very first words Vermeil uttered were an immediate indication that he had no business doing the game. He was gravelly – which might have been passable, but he was also cutting in and out so that every other word was being muted. For a moment, it felt like routine audio difficulties, the sort wireless mics often experience. But within a few minutes it was quite clear that Vermeil was toast.

. . . According to this timeline from the Network’s website, the lead producer for games is Mark Loomis and John Gonzalez is the director.

We’re guessing neither had the guts to tell Vermeil he was too banged up to go. Didn’t want to see the poor guy cry, after all.

They just figured who wouldn’t really need his voice in order to offer commentary. Did they think he was going to write everything on the telestrator? If that even worked, of course. Was he supposed to use sign language in a little box in the lefthand corner of the screen? Mental telepathy, perhaps?

. . . Gumbel, in another awful outing, referred to an expiring play clock as the “shot clock” at one point during the game.

. . . Evidently, Greg Kinnear was not on-site to fill in for the coach. David Stern would have had Kinnear on the NBAIR jet and in the house by halftime. Of course, Stern would have never let the scratchy-voiced, fading in-and-out Vermeil get near the mic.

. . . As bad as the broadcast was, Faulk showed a lot of booth potential.

UPDATED MONDAY, 12/18 8:30 a.m. . .Somehow, USA Today’s Michael McCarthy, chooses to overlook the vaporization of Vermeil’s voice.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom