Look Who's Talking (WOW!) - AFL "Open Mike Night" Raw

MAJORBLOGS.NET - OPINION - Be careful of what you wish for. 

Most sports fans find that there is something about the silent show on the sidelines that fascinates us.  What are they saying to motivate the players? My coach is ripping the official a new one?!

'Boy, I would have loved to have heard that...'

So ESPN-2 installed microphones on everyone in Monday night's Arena Football (AFL)  game between the Philadelphia Soul and the Georgia Force.  They called it, "Open Mike Night." They used it. A lot.

The majority of the experiment was pretty humdrum.  Much of what was being said just wasn't even worth the pauses in the commentary of the game. So much of what was being said, with cameras drilling in on the players and coaches, seemed a bit staged, or contrived.  Every last one of them knew that they were being recorded, so it probably had a very chilling effect on free speech for the majority of both sidelines.

Except for Philadelphia Soul offensive coordinator Connell Maynor. 

When you do live microphones on athletes and coaches, you know that there needs to be a person in the booth, or the truck, who has their finger on the bleep button.  There was no coffee break for that guy. Maynor could give a rat's a*s about the g*dd*mn*!d microphone he had to wear. Not that he said that. It just kind of showed through the rest of his well-televised rants.  I'm sure that someone, the director or the technical director, thought Maynor's outbursts were "colorful."  That's probably why the camera kept returning to him a like a kid at an ice cream social with their bowl out.

"More, please!"

Maynor, the former quarterback, is a warrior, a general. No one told Napoleon not to exclaim a  'merde' or two while invading Russia. Whether you are marching through that Georgia or the football field of its American namesake, you are going to get pumped up to win.

The only problem was that Maynor put the "offensive" into the Offensive Coordinator position on Monday night. You expect a little salty language from guys on the sidelines.  Connell made a number of remarks to his staff that, while probably normal for him, and barely noticed, came off poorly on live TV.

To be fair, Maynor telling off one of his assistants in a hail of bleeps and ending in "I've got it" probably shouldn't have found its way to air. 

It didn't come off with the good kind of television angry, the Hollywood-meets-AFL for ESPN-2 polish on temper when the microphones are turned on that just sounds downright inspirational.  It was not Vince Lombardi telling his boys to take one for the team. It sounded more like Humphrey Bogart's Captain Queeg in "Mutiny on the Bounty."   You got the impression that someone was challenging or questioning Maynor's call of the game, and that he may not have been appreciating it.

It was good enough to get my wife, who, without headphones, can completely ignore the presence of the television when a football game is on, to look up and say:

"Wow. Who is that guy, and what's his problem?"

The crew at ESPN televising the games seems to be the NFL-aspiring that are learning the ropes through trial and error. Big error was to not only to keep Connell's microphone on, but to keep going back to him repeatedly.  It did not make him come off looking intense and the noble warrior. It made him look like a really angry guy.

Don't get me wrong. I think he is a great offensive coordinator. He is a results man, and, given the Soul's record this year, you can't argue with however he or any of Bret Munsey's staff gets there.  Given Maynor's seeming lack of tolerance of questioning his authority on the field, I don't think it would matter even if you wanted to argue with him.

He may be a sweetheart. He may be a bad boss. The snapshot of Monday night may be a bad day, or a bad moment that was held under the mega-magnifying glass of a television network that seems a little desperate to juice up game coverage, and resorted to exposing a little too much of the sidelines chatter to appeal to the accident rubber-neckers in the audience.

Don't blame Maynor for being Maynor. No one at ESPN would have done that to an NFL offensive coordinator, many of whom are equally blunt, and found their nameplate still on the satellite truck the following week.

All that I know is that, like Las Vegas, most of what is said on the sidelines is probably best left on the sidelines.  If the AFL and ESPN think that this is necessary to keep Arena Football viewers amused, perhaps they should call in a couple of acting coaches and give the coaches one of those Kevin Costner, Bull Durham, know-your-media-cliches for Open Mike Night lectures.

If Maynor goes off, I would rather stick in the [expletives deleted] into my own head silently, and appreciate his intensity and passion without the details.  He has earned better than ESPN-2 gave to him .  The sideline coverage of Monday night does not set his exceptional record of results in the best of lights.

If I want to hear him on television, I think I'll wait until Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays him in the movie.

"Darn it, I have a handle on this fellas," would-say Cuba in the PG version. "Geez." 

My shiny two.