TAKEAWAYS: What the ideal NFL studio show would look like

If you haven’t already, take a look at the companion pieces from Will Leitch and Drew Magary on just how terrible CBS’s Super Bowl broadcast was.

Magary offered some suggestions on how to improve the show, and I’m going to take them a bit further in this edition of TAKEAWAYS to provide you with the Ideal NFL Studio Show:

Four guys at a desk has worked for decades, so that conceit doesn’t change. But what studio shows need is less gloss. Pregame sets look too much like the ones for the Nightly News. Remember, this is the NFL, let’s have fun, we’re not talking life and death in the hour before the games.

Put a couple of beers down in front of the hosts. In case you’ve never been home at 10 a.m. that’s when the Today Show goes into what I call Two Drunk Ladies Blabbing format. Two Drunk Ladies Blabbing works, and there’s no reason a couple of beers on set to make things loose and conversational wouldn’t hurt.

Ideally you could get local craft breweries to provide the beers, but most likely you’d end up with Bud Light instead of Colonel McMillan’s Brown Dog Ale. Whatever, as long as it’s not Blue Moon, because Blue Moon tastes like dishwater.

This might raise some hackles from MADD because it’s seen as encouraging drinking, but a) people drink when they watch football and ignoring it won’t make that go away and b) it could show people the benefit of having one or two beers and making conversation more lively instead of drinking a 12 pack and becoming a staggering mess. There won’t be any chugging on the pregame set, and if any of the talent are teetotalers then they can have an Arnold Palmer.

You want the host to be someone who’s got a dry sense of humor and can tick off highlights with no problem. The opposite of Chris Berman and Terry Bradshaw, basically. Well, Rich Eisen already has this job at NFL Network, but Andrew Siciliano deserves a promotion. He does great work every week and he deserves a job that doesn’t require a pee jar.

I have no problem with former football players on pregame sets. They shouldn’t overwhelm conversation, but they do provide a valuable perspective. The problem is that so many former jocks only have their broadcasting jobs solely because they were good at their football jobs. What does Dan Marino bring to the CBS broadcast that another player couldn’t provide?

The pregame shows should seek out the funniest and smartest former players, not the best ones. And it only needs one so he doesn’t dominate the conversation. If Chris Kluwe gets cut in the offseason, then he’d be my first pick. Stephen White would be another great choice, judging by both his Twitter and journalistic output, and both Roman Oben and Matt Bowen have shown decent chops. None of those players was a star, but that doesn’t matter.

You want your coach to provide the Xs and Os breakdowns. That’s why Mike Ditka is such a waste on a pregame show; Buddy Ryan was the brains behind that operation. But Eric Mangini is quietly one of ESPN’s more thoughtful analysts and has a Gruden-esque relish for watching tape. He could explain to the audience that the Pistol is the formation and the zone-read is the offense, unlike most of the ex-coaches occupying space on pregame sets right now.

This is where you can get creative. Grantland sent Bill Barnwell to Vegas to become an expert on this. SBNation’s own Matt Ufford has hosted a fantasy football show. Whoever the show ultimately chooses doesn’t necessarily have to be someone I follow on Twitter, but it should be someone relatively young who can cater to the Internet crowds that are going to be the bulk of studio show viewership in the years to come.

Don’t change this. You need someone like Jay Glazer in a back room on his iPhone finding out who’s going to be inactive and who’s starting so all the fantasy football players can jump on the waiver wire. Sincerely, anyone who made it to their championship game with Knowshon Moreno at running back.

Boomer Esiason does a ton of other radio work, so no wonder he talks over Shannon Sharpe when they’re put on the same set. I’m not saying that the people in the studio should only work in that studio, but you want them to develop some semblance of chemistry. Viewers can sense phoniness, which is why you always hear complaints about the fake laughter on set. Seriously, James Brown thinks everything is funny, he must provide movie reviews for Katherine Heigl movie posters in his spare time.

But this is a pretty simple way to give viewers something that’s both informative and authentic. You only need four guys, a couple of beers, some real laughs and actual information to fill an hour before a football game for 20 or so Sundays. That shouldn’t be too much to ask, but apparently it is for CBS.