Deadspin: inside the nfl

"Inside The NFL" Returns ... To Showtime

Will Leitch — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:00:50 EDT

Good news, everybody: Those lamenting the loss of "Inside The NFL" take heed, because it's returning to television! Yay! Wait, it's only on Showtime. Boo!

We hope this means they put the show on iTunes, because we don't like "Weeds" THAT much. Because Showtime is owned by CBS, expect to see much of the CBS studio crew on the show. (And if you happen to be a PA on the CBS studio crew ... hey, hope you like overtime!)

But we're glad to have it back. One last piece of advice that we hope you learned from the last couple of seasons: We don't care about the human interest stories, or how the offensive lineman's brother watched the game in the luxury box while nursing his hangnail. Just highlights from every game, please. Thanks.

CBS, Showtime Go 'Inside The NFL' [Variety]

We'll Miss Inside The NFL, And We Don't Think We're The Only Ones

Leitch — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:40:17 EST

A sad day yesterday, kids: HBO canceled "Inside The NFL." This was the one NFL highlight show we watched, because we live in a planet where it's easier for us to have a premium cable channel in our apartment than a basic cable one.

Above is the greatest moment in "Inside The NFL" history, back when Dan Marino was still in "I'm a player and I'm pissed I never won the Super Bowl" mode. We miss that mode a little.

Everyone's all sad about it, but not really.

"It's like saying good-bye to an old friend," said HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, who added the show still averages 2 million viewers per week but increasingly had trouble differentiating itself in a sports TV landscape vastly more crowded than it was in 1977. "It's been a hell of a run," he said. "No shame here, no bitterness, no anger, just a lot of pride."

If we may, we'd point out that when "Inside The NFL" started getting away from running highlights of every game, and instead started showing the same dumb "human interest" stories the other shows went with, that's when the show felt less vital. They should just show those clips. That was always enough. Alas, now they will be another network we can't get. Sigh.

HBO Pulls Plug On Long-Running "Inside The NFL" [Newsday]

Dan Marino, The Early Broadcasting Years

Leitch — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:45:26 EST

We'd never seen this old video, of Dan Marino, back in the Len Dawson "Inside The NFL" days, making a verbal flub and kind of getting a little pissy about it. (When you've scared Len Dawson, you've scared the world.) It's from 2000, when Marino was first trying out as a broadcaster — and was, and is, better than many might have expected — and he brought playoff-level intensity to the desk. We can tell it's playoff-level intensity, because he screwed up and lost.
Barstool Sports]