In 2008, when Tony Kornheiser was a Monday Night Football commentator for ESPN, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers once sat down with him for a pre-game production meeting.
It would be an extreme understatement to say that Rodgers came away unimpressed.
In an interview with ESPN Radio in Milwaukee, Rodgers went off on Kornheiser and said he was embarrassingly unprepared for his job.
“You know who was better than Tony Kornheiser? Dennis Miller was ten times better,” Rodgers said, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. “Dennis Miller was a great comedian, but one of the worst Monday Night Football guys ever. And he was ten times better than Tony Kornheiser. His stuff was actually funny. Tony wasn’t funny at all. He did absolutely no research. We’d sit in those production meetings and he would add absolutely nothing to the conversation. I’d be like, ‘What are we doing here? This is stupid.'”
Rodgers praised Monday Night Football play-by-play man Mike Tirico as coming into production meetings thoroughly prepared. Kornheiser? Not so much.
“You get in there with Tony and he’s asking you all these dumb questions that have no application to the game you are playing or anything you are doing,” Rodgers said. “He’s terrible. . . . I don’t think he’s funny. I don’t think he’s insightful. I don’t think knows, really, anything about sports.”
Most football fans regard Ron Jaworski as one of the top analysts in the business, but Rodgers isn’t particularly thrilled with Jaworski, either.
“I like him, but, when I was coming out, he did the worst segment in the history of TV about me talking about my fundamentals,” Rodgers said of Jaworski. “It was not even close to anywhere near my fundamentals. The first time I met him, someone introduced me to him and I said, ‘Yeah I know him. He’s the guy who ripped me before the draft.’ The rest of the night he told me how great I was. I was like, ‘I know your song and dance.’ And now he loves me.”
The whole interview, in which Rodgers criticized other ESPN employees and took a shot at the Detroit Lions, is well worth listening to. Rodgers comes across as an entertaining and engaging player who’s not afraid to speak his mind. When he retires, he’d be perfect for the Monday Night Football booth. Or as co-host of Pardon the Interruption.