Boomer Esiason spent 14 years as a quarterback in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals (the team he took to the Super Bowl in 1989 as the league’s MVP), New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals before embarking on a career in media in 1997. Today, he is a studio analyst for the “NFL Today on CBS,” a member of Westwood One’s “Monday Night Football” radio broadcast, the host of a sports show on the MSG Network and co-host of a morning drive-time sports-talk show on WFAN.
He also established the Boomer Esiason Foundation in 1993 to raise money and awareness for cystic fibrosis. A New York native and resident, Esiason spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
Favorite piece of music: Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”
Favorite vacation spot: Arizona
Favorite book: “Memorial Day,” by Vince Flynn
Favorite movie: “We Were Soldiers”
Best sports movies: “North Dallas Forty” and “Slapshot”
Most influential person: My dad, without question
Pet peeve: People who are late
Greatest extravagance: My golf club memberships. Got a couple of those.
Biggest challenge: Making sure my son outlives me.
Regrets: I’ve never lived my life with regret. Never questioned a decision I’ve made. I’ve always looked forward, never back.
George Will wrote, “Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life: violence and committee meetings.” Obviously it was not a mistake for you.
Esiason: No, it wasn’t. But I can understand where George Will is coming from because he’s probably a pacifist. The fact of the matter is, I think football is America’s game because of the struggle that’sinvolved with it. And football was the lead-in to the rest of my life.
You have been on both sides of the microphone. What was the adjustment like?
Esiason: Early on, I was covering guys I played with and coaches I played for. So, it was a little tough to be strong critically. You want to do the best you can and carry off a message that has credibility behind it and without embarrassing anybody. But the further I’ve gotten away from it, the more apt I am to just let it fly and say what I feel, which is really the key to every broadcaster, I believe: delivering your message honestly and with credibility.
About sports-talk radio, Rick Reilly said, “It’s delivered to people who are holding down couch springs by people who should be holding down couch springs.”
Esiason: (laughing) Well, I hope he doesn’t feel that way about me.
As a former player, you have some credibility.
Esiason: I do, but you know there’s a need for talk in general, not just sports talk. How about the political-talk radio scene? It really has brought to the forefront many issues, especially now in a presidential race. But as far as sports talk is concerned, the one thing I have found out since working at WFAN is that the fans want a place to vent. They want to verbally blog the issues they think are important.
There is a greater forum than ever now for fans.
Esiason: With the advent of the Internet — which I think is 10 times more dangerous than the radio — there is this blog element where people don’t have to put their names to it. At least on the radio, you know who the guys are who are giving their opinions.
How is it dangerous?
Esiason: Some people don’t do their homework. Nothing could be worse than reading a blog that is completely inaccurate because someone has an ax to grind. You can’t take anything on the Internet very seriously unless it comes from a reputable source. And I would think that three-quarters of the Internet is not reputable.
What don’t the media and the fans understand about pro sports?
Esiason: How hard it is and what you have to put into it to be successful. Quarterback is by far the hardest position to play in team sports. Not only because of your own preparation, but also the things you have to learn. You have to be a very good and succinct communicator and then deal with all the pressures that go into trying to get a play to be successful. It’s hard for the fan to understand that. When they watch the game in front of their TV, they just see a guy dropping back and trying to complete a pass. What they don’t realize is how much that goes on between the actual dropping back and throwing the ball and the guy catching it.
What’s the biggest challenge facing the NFL?
Esiason: Oversaturation. The NFL Network not being on the cable systems has been a little bit of a negative for the NFL, which doesn’t really deal with negatives very often. I think they thought they had the content and the product that was going to be accepted.
And No. 2 would have to be player behavior. When you have guys like Michael Vick and Pacman Jones running around out there, even though they are two guys out of 1,500 who are playing, they leave such a big stain on the NFL that unfortunately all the good things that good players do around the league gets lumped into that. And I think that’s a big problem.
The Giants and Packers played for the NFC championship in sub-freezing weather. How can the game be improved for the fan in the stadium?
Esiason: I don’t necessarily know that the games in cold weather are any different from the games they used to play in cold weather. It’s just a part of what the end of the season brings in northern cities. It’s part of the tradition of football, part and parcel of playing the game outside. I know the Green Bay Packers have gone to great lengths to make sure that fans know how to dress and know not to drink.
Esiason’s fight against cystic
fibrosis began in 1993 when
his son Gunnar, right, was 2.
Super Bowl XXIII: the Bengals vs. the 49ers. What’s your lasting memory of that game?
Esiason: I was supposed to do the Disney World commercial. We had just kicked a field goal to go up 16-13 with about three minutes left. And with that the group that was shooting the commercial (the cameraman, the sound man, the client, the agency — they even had makeup, believe it or not) surrounded me on the sideline as the 49ers were getting ready to embark on one of the greatest drives in the history of pro football. The group kept asking me if I knew what my lines were. And I’m saying, “You can’t think I’m that stupid.” For that entire three-minute period, I’m sitting there going, “I’m going to Disney World.”
When John Taylor scored the winning touchdown, I dropped my head into my hands. Before I could even lift it up and say, “I’m not going to Disney World,” those people were running directly across the field looking for Jerry Rice.
Any thought given to the road not taken, say, coach or GM?
Esiason: I don’t miss that, for two reasons. One, I really feel like I have a much bigger calling in life, and that is to try to cure cystic fibrosis. And being a head coach or GM tied to one team basically doesn’t give you the entire country to work over, and you become kind of plugged into the fan base. And, two, I don’t know if I could get along with today’s athletes.
Tell me about your foundation.
Esiason: We were founded in 1993 because my son, Gunnar, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis the year that I was the Jets’ quarterback. Gunnar and I graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. He was 2 years old. Might have been the youngest ever on the cover of SI, but it kind of got us off and running and we put a name and a face to cystic fibrosis. Since that time we’ve raised over $60 million. Gunnar is living, breathing proof that you can live with cystic fibrosis and have a very good teenage life. He is a quarterback and a lacrosse and hockey player. Twenty-five years ago, that might not have been the case. To me, that’s probably the biggest accomplishment — that we make people realize that it’s not the end of the world.
