TVSquad

You wouldn't know that Fox football was ready for prime time based on the lame broadcast of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer-Miami Dolphin game the other night. The number one team in the booth -- Joe Buck and Troy Aikman -- seemed ill-prepared for the game. It was embarrassing to watch them call the game.

Listen, I know it's only pre-season and everyone -- including the networks -- are working out the kinks, but I expect Buck and Aikman to be on top of their game. They usually are, so I guess I was surprised by the sloppy effort.

Monday night, Artie Lange went on Joe Buck's awful new show Joe Buck Live and did to him what Keyser Soze did to the Hungarian gang in The Usual Suspects.

If you didn't see it, let me tell you this much: Artie didn't kill the show; it was already dead when he got there. What he did was the equivalent of finding a dead squirrel (with awful, frat-boy hair), filling it full of firecrackers, then cackling gleefully as the guts rained down onto Jason Sudeikis and Paul Rudd.

Artie Lange's appearance on Joe Buck Live was boorish, crude, mean-spiritied, and blatantly homophobic. It was the kind of thing that'll probably end the career of the poor person who booked him on the show.

It's also something that we need a hell of a lot more of...

Last year, when FOX announced that Joe Buck (right) would add pre-game hosting to his play-by-play duties on the network's NFL broadcasts, the words "one-year experiment" kept popping into my head. I mean, think about how impractical having Buck pull double duty was going to be: every week, FOX NFL Sunday would have to go on the road, broadcasting from the stadium of whatever game Buck and booth partner Troy Aikman were working that week. By the last few weeks of the season, which found the show originating from its Los Angeles home base, you knew that the network was wearying of the constant road trips.

So it comes as no big surprise that, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the network gave Buck the choice to do one or the other next year, but not both. Wisely, Buck chose to stay in the booth. Curt Menefee, who ably took the anchor chair during halftimes, post-game shows, and when Buck was working the baseball playoffs, will be installed as the permanent host.

When James Brown (no, not the "Sex Machine" James Brown... the other one) left Fox to become the new host of The NFL Today at CBS, Fox kept everyone in the dark about who was going to take his place as host of Fox NFL Sunday. They even made the mystery into an ad campaign. But the mystery is over: the network has named lead play-by-play man Joe Buck as the host of the pre-game show. Because Buck is still going to broadcast the games, though, the show will be on the road the entire year, originating from the stadium where Buck is supposed to be working that week. Curt Menefee will host the halftime and post-game shows.

Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News, who reported on the unconfirmed rumors yesterday, felt that Fox was making too safe of a move with Buck. According to Raissman, it was a perfect opportunity for Fox to develop someone new in the host role, someone who can evolve as he tries to corral Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmy Johnson. I'm not quite sure about that argument; after all, for every Bob Costas that gets a chance to shine in the studio, there's two Brent Musburgers that make us want to throw things at the screen. Those aren't good odds, as far as I'm concerned.