It was always interesting to listen to ESPN management and its football staffers talk about Jon Gruden because it was the closest thing I experienced to asking a movie producer about the star of his or her film. Network management often speak effusively of their NFL talent, but ESPN staffers seemed truly thunderstruck by Gruden. The plaudits traveled past genuflecting and exited somewhere a couple of miles before idolatry. Here was then-ESPN president John Skipper to me in 2012 when ESPN eliminated Ron Jaworski from the booth to make the announcing team Mike Tirico and Gruden:
“What we are mostly trying to do is we want to ride Gruden.