CHRIS BERMAN, the "face of America's football weekends since the earliest days of ESPN," will not be part of the net's football programming "for the first time" since '86 when the season begins next week, according to Dan Shaughnessy of the BOSTON GLOBE. Berman has long been "must-see TV for sports fans." He said of the season, "If all goes as planned, the first two NFL Sundays I'll kind of be in the dark. I don't even know if I'll get scores." He added, "It may be strange for viewers, but that's not for me to say. Life moves on and unfortunately I found that out on a lot of levels. They'll do fine and I hope I'm fondly remembered when we get into the fall. Like, 'We enjoyed hanging out and getting football from him and his gang.' That's what I hope people remember." Shaughnessy noted Berman's wife, KATHY, died in a car accident in May, and the two had "planned to spend three months in Maui during the first year of his 'reduced role' at ESPN." Berman: "We had a lot of things planned." Berman said of life without his wife, "I don't know if it hits me. It's like when JIMMY V made that speech about, 'You laugh, you cry.' You do all of that, often before breakfast. ... I've lived a pretty charmed life. Professionally and personally. I haven't had this. Our children never had health issues. So you wonder, why the bad stuff dodged us, and not others." He added, "I'm so buoyed by the strength and the warmth of the human spirit and all the people who have reached out to us. I'm blown away by it and that's a lesson I'll take to my grave. In a lot of ways that's what's helped me get through it" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/27).
