Report: ESPN’s Chris Berman will retire following 2016 NFL season
It’s common for this generation of sports fan, and especially those who follow the NFL closely, to pan the work of ESPN’s Chris Berman and dismiss him as a has-been who is past his prime.
Those folks likely will celebrate the news that Berman, reported by The Big Lead, will retire after the 2016 NFL season. The rest of us will tip our caps at a true giant in the industry who changed the way the game was presented to fans everywhere.
Berman, 61, joined the network in 1979, shortly after it started, having gone to school nearby at Brown and broadcasted in nearby Hartford, Conn. previously. And he’s been at ESPN ever since, the longest-tenured on-air talent there along with Bob Ley.
According to the report, Berman is expected to retire and not join another network. Change clearly is in the air in Bristol from top to bottom, especially with ESPN’s on-air NFL talent, although the network easily could slide Trey Wingo or Suzy Kolber into Berman’s role after the 2016-2017 season. It’s not known if Berman will retire immediately after the Super Bowl or whether he’ll walk away after the 2017 NFL draft.
But New York Times media columnist Richard Sandomir spoke with Berman’s agent, who denied the Big Lead report.
Will he go? We’re not sure. We do know that there will be strong feelings about his next move either way. ESPN has been clearing big salaries off the books, so it’s possible that this report is not coming from Berman’s camp.
No doubt, Berman represents a bloated, bigger-than-life institution of a different generation, and his football coverage no longer feels quite as essential as it once did. But his earlier work, especially throughout the 1990s and into the last decade, was innovative, industry-changing and the right balance of educational and amusing.
Through SportsCenter, Monday Night Countdown, Sunday NFL Countdown and his NFL draft coverage, Berman helped turn a cottage industry into an empire. He and Tom Jackson were absolutely appointment viewing for the NFL fan on Sundays and Mondays in the fall (and a darned solid baseball guy, too), and Berman helped birth a generation of wannabe sportscasters who aped his signature style.
A longtime ESPN employee told Shutdown Corner last year that Berman has been whispering about retirement for years to close friends and the folks up high in Bristol. But he remained a popular figure in some regards and a warhorse for the network’s NFL coverage.
Yes, the nicknames turned hammy at some point. The calls sometimes felt like they were as much about Berman as they were about the action being dictated. With the proliferation of the internet and highlights readily available in so many formats, Berman had trouble adapting his shtick to keep himself relevant and cutting edge. “The Swami,” for instance, doesn’t play today like it once did.
But he unquestionably was one of the best to ever do what he did in his prime and should be regarded as such. So if this indeed his last hurrah (“he … could … go … all … the … way!), we wish him well. Others might dance on Berman’s ESPN grave, but don’t forget his contributions to the game, which were considerable.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
