Recovering from Rush
by Andy Behrens

ESPN's Chris Berman grimly began Sunday's "NFL Countdown" with an understatement: "Our show has been the focus of attention this week."

His show, in fact, has been the center of a shitstorm.

After the blustery and often nonsensical Rush Limbaugh said what he said, his studio cohorts — NFL greats Steve Young, Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson, as well as Berman — let it go unchallenged. Or so the outraged reportage suggested. No less an ESPN observer than The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica said that the Berman and friends had "sat it out" when given an opportunity to refute Limbaugh.

In fact, both Jackson and Young confronted Limbaugh immediately and somewhat angrily. But they reacted to his football idiocy, not his cultural insensitivity. Glaring at Limbaugh, Jackson defended Donovan McNabb saying, "Somebody went to those championship games. Somebody went to those Pro Bowls." Young added, "When [the Eagles] are winning, nobody makes more plays than Donovan McNabb."

The "Countdown" cast members were ill-prepared, however, to react to social commentary on their football show. Unfortunately for them, their show's producers had hired a social commentator. Yet ratings were up, tension was thick. Then Rush suggested that Donovan McNabb, who has already quarterbacked the Philadelphia Eagles to two NFC Championship games, was overrated by the media. Because he's black.

Look, Rush thinks Tennessee Tuxedo is overrated because he's vaguely black. Rush is an asshole.

The story erupted as the Philly media, and McNabb himself, reacted. The non-ESPN national sports media pounced. The network was condemned by SI's Michael Silver and USA Today's Jon Saraceno. Then the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and multiple presidential candidates got involved. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie blasted the network both for allowing Limbaugh a forum, and for its sensationalized fictional quasi-drama, "Playmakers," which commoly portrays black athletes as over-sexed, over-drugged caricatures: "The issue is not Rush Limbaugh. The issue is how we've come to hire Rush Limbaugh, and how we've come to portray athletes. For example, showcasing NFL players purportedly doing cocaine at halftime in 'Playmakers.' Nothing could be further from the truth."

Predictably contrarian, Slate ran a piece that suggested Rush was right, that McNabb had been vastly overrated, and that statistics illustrate it. Here are the statistics from McNabb's three seasons as starter:

You'd take this, right? If you're an NFL fan, you dream about TD/INT ratios of 2:1. You fantasize about quarterbacks who run for 600 yards a season. McNabb isn't good. He's amazing.

But if you're an NFL fan, you know that already, because you're not an evil, wrongheaded, hyper-conservative boob.

On Sunday, the cast of "NFL Countdown" had options. They could've ignored Rush's malignant monthlong presence; they could've briefly acknowledged it, then gotten to the show's signature shtick. They could've had an inflatable Rush doll interject in random and inane ways.

But the members of the "Countdown" cast did none of these things. Instead, they were honest. They devoted the show's first segment — 10 minutes of airtime — to a protracted apology. Berman said, "I'm angry for the hurt it's caused African Americans." He later acknowledged, "I missed it. I shouldn't have missed it. I've been kickin' myself all week." Somehow Berman said this straight-faced, without breaking into Supertramp. Jackson was visibly upset, admitting, "No one prevented us from speaking." He added, "Rush Limbaugh is known for the divisive nature of his rhetoric. ... [His] comments could not have been more hurtful." Young compared missing the opportunity to condemn Limbaugh's racial blather to missing an open receiver; Irvin bluntly confessed that he missed the raceless brotherhood of a locker room.

It was a clutch reaction, if unexpected from a network that had downplayed the biggest sports story of the week. It also restored credibility to a TV program that never should've been about anything but football. This may not have been the first time that an ostensibly harmless sports show inflicted harm, but it was the nicest recovery from such a debacle.

Meanwhile, McNabb won another game Sunday afternoon, the 31st against 15 losses in his previous four (overrated) seasons.

E-mail Andy Behrens at abehrens53 at hotmail dot com.