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Don't dream it's over

Elway may miss magic of the comeback from the booth

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Posted: Wednesday April 28, 1999 03:43 PM

Boomer Esiason has some haunting words of advice for the retiring John Elway: It will be painful to get used to life without the Sunday-afternoon rush of football.

Elway now enters a post-football world that will certainly include a shot to do TV work, perhaps teaming with Esiason on ABC's Monday Night Football. ABC is very interested in hiring Elway as the second blond ex-quarterback in the booth, to team with Al Michaels and Esiason. Boomer's view? He'd love Elway alongside him. Esiason tells me that shortly after he signed his deal to give up football for TV a year ago, Elway asked him if he'd done the right thing. Esiason still isn't sure he did. He told me: "When you walk away knowing you still can play -- and John will feel this -- you'll close the door on your youth. TV doesn't haven't that same edge to it as playing a game. It's not even close.''

Now on the tee ...

One other Elway tidbit: NBC has secured Elway and Michael Jordan to play in the Lake Tahoe celebrity pro event over the Fourth of July weekend. And now the network is trying to get the third retiring Musketeer of recent sporting times, Wayne Gretzky, to complete this historic threesome.

Detmer may sit Couch down

In Cleveland's recent minicamp, top draft choice Tim Couch was impressive, but guess who was better? Ty Detmer. The man who was supposed to serve only as Couch's mentor may actually hold him off for the starting job in September. Coach Chris Palmer told me: "Ty knows our offense so well now that I think he has a good chance to win it.'' Couch will have one big advantage: Because Kentucky's classes are finished in mid-May, he'll be able to report to full-time duty with the Browns on May 16, a full month before Akili Smith can report to the Bengals.

Eastern block

In New England, the momentum is swinging back toward Foxboro as the Patriots' home of the 21st century. A couple of very influential teams, the Giants and Steelers, oppose a move by the Pats to Hartford. They could form a voting bloc at the league's May meeting to halt the transfer from the nation's sixth-largest TV market, Boston, to the 27th, Connecticut's state capitol. And now Massachusetts has offered the Patriots basically the same deal it would have taken to get the deal done a year ago. The next big date is Sunday, when the Patriots can walk away with no penalty from the Hartford transaction. It's beginning to look a lot like Foxboro, again.

 

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