COMMENTARY
The temptation to chase star power is real and understandable, and it’s certainly much easier for sports television networks to hire established names than to develop their own.
This is how we end up with Peyton Manning rejecting eight-figure contract offers to join one NFL rights-holder or another as a rite of recent offseasons. It’s how we get Jason Witten, who must have revealed in a screen test that he has all the charisma of a fir tree, walking off the field and into the “Monday Night Football” booth. This is the thinking that anoints Ray Lewis as an ESPN studio analyst despite the spasm-dancing ex-Raven being a nonsensical rambler with a still-missing white suit.