All Hail The Pathos Of The NBA Draft Lottery

Tony Kornheiser. The now-former "Monday Night Football" analyst faced criticism of his stint in the booth almost immediately, but it was never as vitriolic as it was for other failed MNF analysts (Dennis Miller, Dan Fouts) because most people who would write media criticism know Kornheiser and like him. The irony of his tenure — which ESPN is kindly letting him slide out using the "I was ready to leave and, oh yeah, totally afraid to fly" excuse; kudos to them, by the way, for somehow avoiding leaks before their announcement — is that if they would have just left him alone to be Tony Kornheiser, he wouldn't have been successful on the show, but at least he would have been tolerable. That is to say: Kornheiser never really fit on "MNF," and the mistake was thinking he possibly could. When Joe Theismann was fired, Kornheiser lost the only path toward this working: Being the guy who drove Joe Theismann crazy on the air. Ron Jaworski is a better analyst than Theismann — by a factor of about 35,000 — but he was too amiable to bounce off Kornheiser. Now, the result of the team of Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and Jaworski will be a dull, x-and-o description of what's actually going on in the game. Imagine that. Happy trails, Tony.