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Booger McFarland never asked to be on “Monday Night Football.” It happened fast. Having never called an NFL game, McFarland went from a relative sportscasting unknown on the SEC Network to the most scrutinized booth in the business, with the added bonus of being tapped as “football’s Charles Barkley” by his producer and stationed on …
Booger McFarland never asked to be on “Monday Night Football.” It happened fast.
Having never called an NFL game, McFarland went from a relative sportscasting unknown on the SEC Network to the most scrutinized booth in the business, with the added bonus of being tapped as “football’s Charles Barkley” by his producer and stationed on what came to be known as the Booger Mobile in his first season.
Now, just two years later, he and Joe Tessitore are officially out. So what’s next?
“I don’t really know just yet,” McFarland told The Post. “I have a couple of years left on my contract so I’m not going anywhere, so I’m assuming that we get through this pandemic and everything that is going on with that, we will figure it out.”
Sources have told The Post that ESPN’s plan is for McFarland to move into a prominent studio role, which is what he had put himself in position for on MNF in the first place. The exact details need to be worked out.
This offseason, even though McFarland wasn’t officially out yet, ESPN showed interest in Tony Romo, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees as potential replacements for him.
“For me, the constant speculation was not that big of a deal,” McFarland, 42, said. “Would you like not to have it? Sure, come on, man. That’s human nature. Did it affect me or bother me one iota? Not really.”
The leading candidates for the new booth are Steve Levy on play-by-play with analysts Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick and/or Brian Griese. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit could be a possibility depending on what happens with college.
“There is so much uncertainty about the next few months that there is not a hurry here,” ESPN executive vice president of production Stephanie Druley said.
While one-and-done Jason Witten took the brunt of the abuse in 2018, social media went hard after McFarland in his only season as a solo analyst.
“I never looked to get the job,” McFarland said. “It was just one of those things that the opportunity came up.”
In the spring of 2018, McFarland was asked to try out for MNF. He and Witten beat out a field of more than a dozen candidates that included Brett Favre, Kurt Warner and Jesse Palmer. McFarland was a Cinderella candidate.
Criticism eventually followed, especially this year. From being a first-round draft pick and a two-time Super Bowl champion to being benched, traded and cut, McFarland said he was prepared as a professional athlete for all of it. So memes are not something he focused on.
“I don’t,” McFarland said. “I’ve been in the arena since I was 13, man. As an athlete, the cool part of having dealt with fans for years, you understand that fans are going to love you sometimes and fans are going to hate you sometimes. That is part of it.
“Anytime you are the biggest fish in the pond, you have to deal with a lot of things.”
It didn’t help that the 2018 booth was rolled out like it was going to revolutionize sportscasting. Jay Rothman, then the MNF producer, said Tessitorre was a “young Brent Musburger/Frank Sinatra combo,” while Witten was “Captain America” and McFarland will be “football’s Charles Barkley.”
“For me, I always try to approach things and I’ve always learned that the best approach is the humble approach,” McFarland said. “That is the way I go about things. Unfortunately, you can’t control what other people say.”
While McFarland gives ESPN credit for trying the Booger Mobile in the first year, he admits it made it more difficult. ESPN permanently parked the contraption before the 2018 season even ended.
“Overall, when you talk about broadcasting, it was tough for a three-man booth to be as cohesive as it could be with one of the people 75 yards away,” McFarland said.
MNF may be the most picked apart booth because it is a standalone game at the end of the NFL weekend, where people many times don’t have a rooting interest. McFarland, like Tessitore and Witten, had never done an NFL game before. It is not the place for on-the-job training.
To McFarland, post-Witten and the Booger Mobile, last year was his and Tessitore’s rookie season as boothmates.
“It was a typical Year 1,” McFarland said. “You go through your growing pains and the only way you grow through them is on the job. It happens to be one of those jobs that you have to do it in front of 15 million people.
“I just wish that you have an opportunity to, as we do in football, you make mistakes, you learn from them and you correct them and you move on. That is the one thing that I wish we had an opportunity to do, but we don’t.”
Still, he said he will look back on the experience fondly.
“It was a good experience,” McFarland said. “I don’t have anything bad to say about Monday Night. Obviously, it is one of the top jobs, if not the top job, in the industry. Overall, regardless of the outcome, it was a very good experience.”
