Longtime ESPN announcer, dead at 80.

Kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of NFL broadcasters: no respect at all. He did Sunday Night Football for 19 years when that was the red-headed stepchild of the NFL's TV packages, and everyone agreed that the booth was terrible because of Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire. When the ESPN game moved to Mondays, they didn't keep him, no one else pursued him, ESPN just stuck him on college games for the next few years until whenever he retired. It always struck me as an odd fate for someone who was, for better or worse, a guy doing national NFL broadcasts for almost two decades. Like, neither Fox nor CBS saw fit to bump Don Criqui or an increasingly confused Dick Stockton from regional coverage for an established national voice. No respect at all.

In fact, my lasting memory of him was during a college game when out of nowhere he went "what is Britney doing with her life."

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To me, Mike Patrick was the Brooks Brothers of broadcasters—classic, composed, slightly nostalgic, and exudes an authority that says, “I know college football, and I pronounce it with gravitas.”

"Kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of NFL broadcasters" - I agree with this. He was really good.

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Until I opened this thread, I completely forgot that this guy existed, and now he doesn't any longer. That Sunday night football game was consistently the worst match up of the week. I felt like a lowlife watching it sometimes.

I'm surprised it took the NFL as long as it did to treat a Sunday night national game as anything other than their weird pygmy thing in Bristol. Even while Monday night was the game of the week and the top late game the #2, they could have made Sunday night the #3, but kept it as something like the #11. I know it wasn't really Titans-Jaguars every week, but somehow it always felt that way.

There are a few ESPN games from the early 2000s up on youtube. I've watched bits and pieces of a few, and even though they tried porting over the MNF imaging from ABC for a few years, the presentation had a weird, not-quite-right feel compared with the network telecasts. If you remember when the NHL was on OLN/Versus, it was the NFL equivalent of that. Patrick was always solid, but Theismann was always considered kind of dope. And when they got Monday, he was the one they kept.

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my dad couldn't stand mike patrick's voice but i always had a soft spot for the original sunday night football. i probably saw more saints games that way. i still remember the embarrassing kyle turley incident, against the jets, 2001 season. he ripped a guy's helmet off and got ejected from the game. the saints lost. it was utterly pathetic. in the playoff mix later in the season at 7-5, and lost their remaining 4 games to finish 7-9, and the locker room was in shambles. they got rid of ricky williams i think after this season.

i thought the booth was decent even with theismann being such a dork.

Was it Mike Patrick or Paul Maguire that would slobber over the top praise for the most mediocre plays?

"A beautiful night for football here in Chicago"

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I prefer having the game of the week on Monday night rather than Sunday night. There's already too much football on Sunday.

Now that the league can flex Monday games, I can see the merit of having the game of the week on a standalone day. If I'm not mistaken, the late game often gets a bigger audience than the night game.

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The ESPN SNF era was kind of fun in its way wasn't it? No pressure in missing some of the game if there was a new Simpsons on, otherwise you could just enjoy the awful trainwreck football like the 97 Bears and Rams both trying to tank against each other for the #1 pick or the Joe Horn cellphone game.

Interestingly, the legacy of ESPN Sunday Night Football is that the update chime from the NFL Draft is based on the very last theme song they used, the one after the one I remember best (tornado sirens over a generic beat). That only lasted a year or two but the chime has lasted ever since.

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