POSTED: Sunday September 9th 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK 1 OF NBC ?FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


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       Barber on Coughlin: ?He?s taking a softer approach with the players, showing that he cares and I think that will pay huge dividends for the team.?


       NEW YORK ? Sept. 9, 2007 ? Following are highlights from NBC’s “Football Night in America” studio show, as host Bob Costas, co-host Cris Collinsworth, co-host Keith Olbermann, analysts Tiki Barber and Jerome Bettis, and reporter Peter King of Sports Illustrated take a look at the day’s top storylines in the NFL:

COLLINSWORTH ON PATRIOTS’ PERFORMANCE AGAINST THE JETS:
“Tom Brady, Randy Moss, they were sensational. After Thursday night a lot of people were ready to hand the Colts back the Vince Lombardi Trophy. You better hang on a minute.”

“Effectively today, the AFC East is over.”

BARBER ON STARTING HIS NEW CAREER:
“Even though I’ve been out of the game for six months and I’m on to a new career at NBC, I still feel anxiety for those guys [his former teammates]. I’m completely okay with it. I’m happy in my new life.”

BARBER ON CRITICIZING HIS FORMER COACH TOM COUGHLIN:
“I don’t think you need to live your life having regrets. I make decisions like we all do and you live with the consequences. I became an outspoken player as I got older. It was good for me in personal ways to express my opinions as truthfully as I wanted to.”

MORE BARBER ON COUGHLIN:
“Tom Coughlin was great for me. He taught me the minutia, how to hold onto the football. At the same time Coughlin learned from guys like me and others. If you look at the Giants now it’s a completely different team. Coach Coughlin is a different kind of coach. They have a panel of veterans now who can go and give him input on what the team needs. He’s taking softer approach with the players, showing that he cares and I think that will pay huge dividends for the team.”

COLLINSWORTH ON BARBER:
“Enough of this. The Giants already hate you. Let’s go on to the rest of the league.”

COLLINSWORTH ON JOEY HARRINGTON:
“Joey Harrington coming in as the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons and he looked like, Joey Harrington. He’s really good at those losing locker room interviews.”

BARBER ON BROWNS QB SITUATION:
“It was almost unwatchable watching Frye and Anderson play quarterback. I don’t see why you just don’t put Brady Quinn in now. Sure he’s going to struggle a little bit but just like Vince Young last year eventually he’s going to get it and you take this opportunity to give him the snaps now.”

COLLINSWORTH ON BROWNS QB SITUATION:
“It was like a NASA countdown. They played their third best quarterback, their second best quarterback, they just never got to liftoff with Brady Quinn.”

EXCERPTS FROM THE KEITH OLBERMANN REPORT (TKO):
“A year ago this would have been more than just the old rivalry, and I mean Cowboys-Giants, not Tiki versus Tom Coughlin. A year ago, it would have been Coughlin versus Bill Parcells in the battle to see which of them was the true Typhoid Mary of stress; the real victor in the eternal struggle between coach and player. Yet in a year’s time, Parcells has fallen. And in Dallas, a town used to coaches stiffer than Tom Landry’s hat, the Cowboys not only kept T.O., but chose as his boss, everybody’s friend, good old Wade Phillips. And thus, among the last of his anxious breed, is Coughlin, who has held two-and-a-half hour team meetings during which players were not allowed to cross their legs.      But, not a month ago, Coughlin cancelled one of those meetings so he could instead take the Giants bowling, as in pins and rented shoes. And, he revealed that last June after mini-camp, he’d held a casino night—a casino night for players, courtesy the coach of the first pro franchise to hire Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi. If Tom Coughlin actually walked up to the guy at the cash register at a bowling alley in Albany, New York and said ‘I need all your lanes, I need to rent 81 pairs of shoes, and a diet coke, please,’ then the age is closed and the NFL coach is now as much scoutmaster as taskmaster and Vince Lombardi is, at this moment, screaming ‘Casino Night, Casino Night!”

FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA:
Michael Weisman is the executive in charge of production, “Football Night in America,” Sam Flood is coordinating producer and Bucky Gunts serves as director.


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