“Every single play, somebody’s risking their life,” he says. When you could flip on the game and pour yourself a drink and talk about football in an untortured way. He wants to reclaim a lost, ’70s ideal of being. Tessitore, in both manner and practice, is proposing something bigger. Mark Kriegel, who calls boxing with Tessitore, says: “There’s something gloriously retro about Joe.” Just about everyone who has tried to revive Monday Night Football has called for a return to the ’70s prime of Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, and Don Meredith. It means a guy who can take a heavy-handed pour of tequila and cut into a big porterhouse and who doesn’t mind-as Tess and Witten did during one vibe this summer-staging a boxing match inside a deserted restaurant. “Dude” is just about the ultimate Tessitore compliment. Of Witten, Tessitore says fondly: “I find him to be a total dude.” “It’s almost like it’s over-the-top,” says Jason Witten, the former Dallas Cowboys tight end who sat at the kitchen island before being hired as Tessitore’s Monday Night partner. New vibees, however, may initially find Tessitore disarming. “The way I describe a gouda or a moliterno may be the way I describe a critical third down.” -Joe Tessitore Stephanie Druley, one of the ESPN executives who oversees Monday Night Football, has programmed her phone so that when Tessitore calls, she sees a picture of Sesame Street’s game-show host, Guy Smiley.
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL HOSTS TV
It’s as though you were being drawn inside a TV screen. When you understand this about Tessitore, his manners-the way he calls you “man” and “dude” and “bro” the way he plies you with food and drink until almost midnight-begin to make sense. “The way I describe a gouda or a moliterno may be the way I describe a critical third down,” he says, picking at the platter in front of us, “or Keanu Neal coming over and wrecking a tight end right at the goal line.” “Performance?” Tessitore says of his game calls. His TV self and his real self have achieved oneness. One of the arresting things about Tessitore, as the former ESPN boxing writer Brian Campbell points out, is that he utterly rejects this idea. In my zoological studies of play-by-play announcers, I’ve found many of them hold their TV persona at some remove. Tessitore filled two big glasses with tequila and ice. His wife, Rebecca, had laid out a feast: black truffle moliterno cheese and three kinds of salami and a small mountain of prosciutto di parma. One afternoon last month, it was under these auspices that Tessitore, who is 47, led me from the front door of his Connecticut house to a kitchen island.
It’s because I always want to be my authentic self.”
I want you to eat cheese and prosciutto and salumi. Joe Tessitore, the announcer ESPN picked to reboot Monday Night Football, has a preferred way of getting to know people.
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