The STRANGEST NFL Announcer CONTROVERSY in NBC HISTORY

come join me on my second channel jaguargater8 where we'll talk all things college football new video drops every monday at 6 pm eastern click the card in the upright corner to watch the latest video and now on with our feature presentation look we all have our favorite announcers and we all have our guys that we cannot stand there's always one announcing team that makes you want to mute your television and makes you think that they have no idea what they're talking about or they're so biased against your team that you cannot stand to listen to them there are collective groans when you get jay philly or jonathan vilma on your broadcast and when you're inviting them into your home for three hours just waiting for them to say something stupid fans complain about announcers all the time and i am no different whatsoever however imagine a team hating an announcer so much that they requested that they be removed from their assignment of calling the game imagine if andy reid went to the press and said i hate tony romo i hate that he's assigned to our game i want cbs to remove him from the broadcast immediately and i want to have someone else call the game that seems ridiculous right and that seems even more ridiculous when he realized that well the coaches players and team personnel can't hear the announcers during the game because they're only relieved through the television yet as ridiculous as this hypothetical situation might sound in 1987 that's exactly what happened the houston oilers were so furious at the announcers that they were assigned that they requested that nbc changed the pairing and the result was a bitter feud between a network and a team that resulted in a whole lot of bickering to say the least this is the story behind the strangest announcer controversy in the history of the nfl on nbc before i talk about the controversy in question we need some context to understand the game that was taking place as well as who the announcers were and why one team was absolutely furious with this pairing we were 60 of the way through the 15 game strikes jordan 1987 season and entering game number 10 of this rather bizarre year there were two teams tied atop the afc central in one corner you have the 6-3 cleveland browns who had won the division in each of the past two seasons made it to the conference championship the year before in 1986 before john elway did some things and were one of the best teams in the nfl through nine games the browns had scored 238 points which was the second best total in the afc only behind the miami dolphins at 244 as well as the fourth best total in the nfl only behind the dolphins the niners at 250 and the bears at 246. being in the same company as two of the past three super bowl champions is not too shabby they had a great defense that allowed just 131 points through the first sny games for an average of just over 14 points per game this was not only the best total in the afc but the best total in the nfl and their point differential plus 107 was the best in the nfl it also seemed like the browns were peaking at the right time having won four of their last five games including back-to-back victories against the atlanta falcons and the buffalo bills everyone expected the browns to be near the top and to be leading the afc central they have the best preseason odds of any team in the afc to win the super bowl at six to one however through nine games they were tied with another team atop the division with this team coming completely out of nowhere this team had awful 120-1 odds and over the past five seasons had gone 16 and 57 winning less than 22 percent of their games and that team that was stunning the football world and taking the league by storm was the houston oilers led by quarterback warren moon the oilers had a top five offerings to the conference a top five defense to the conference and a top five point differential in the conference much like the browns the oilers were playing some of their best football as of late having won three of their last four games including a dominant 23-3 victory over the pittsburgh steelers where they help pittsburgh to just eight first downs as a side note to learn more about the game that the steelers played before that one against the oilers click the card in the upper right corner entering this 10th game of the season there was perhaps no bigger game on the schedule than this one between the browns and the oilers there was a lot to play for and even that's under selling it quite a bit not only are both teams fighting for a playoff spot as there was a chance based on the day's results that the loser of this game that dropped to six and four would be on the outside of the plow picture but the winner of this game takes sole possession of first place in the division with five to go if the oilers win in front of their home crowd especially since they won the first meeting in cleveland 15 to 10 during the replacement games then they would own the tiebreaker outright over cleveland on paper this was the biggest scheme that the oilers had since 1980 during the bum phillips stays and the love you blue era it was so big that the oilers sold out the astrodome and sold standing room only tickets but obviously not everyone who cared about this game would be inside the 8th wonder of the world you would have hundreds of thousands more and maybe even millions more depending on how the tv maps looked watching this game at home and if they tuned into the game who would they be listening to and hearing on the broadcast jim donovan and reggie rucker oh boy it seemed kind of weird that for a game this big that nbc would have signed two announcers very low on the depth chart for it assigning donovan and rucker to this game would be like if there was a battle between the browns and the bengals for first place in the afc north right before thanksgiving and cbs decided that the game should be broadcast by spiro adidas and jay philly god knows we don't need that even taking everything else out of the equation the decision itself to have these two broadcasters commentating on these games seemed awfully questionable simply from a depth chart perspective donovan had worked one game for the network before and rupper's reputation was completely shot by this point with him almost being universally hated as a broadcaster in fact it was so bad that not even three weeks before this game one writer said as we all know anyone is better than reggie rucker and he still had not recovered from losing all of his credibility from the samweis incident in 1984 when he said that prior to a game against the cincinnati bengals he had dinner with weiss even though it was revealed afterwards that rucker made up the whole story and never had dinner with the man you can learn more about that bizarre saga by clicking the card in the upper right corner however even if we ignore the fact that on paper this broadcasting duo is seemed like a poor choice for a game of this caliber you have to consider the two men and their backgrounds looking at jin donovan he was a sports tanker for wkyz tv which was a television station in cleveland donovan was thrilled to be asked to call this brown's orders game as again this was just his second broadcast for the nfl on nbc as donovan said upon finding out that he was gonna be getting the job i was so ecstatic i don't think my feet touched the ground for a day the nbc officials told me i did a good job on the first game and would get back to me but you're never really sure until you get that telephone call despite being new to the national scene however he was not new to cleveland as he was to play by playman for pre-season games involving you guessed it the cleveland browns as for reggie rucker along with working some preseason games alongside donovan rucker's claim to fame as a player was his time spent in cleveland with the browns rucker played seven seasons with the browns and was still highly regarded for his consistent play with the team by the time he retired in 1981 he was one of the best receivers in the storied history of the franchise if you looked at every player in team history to have at least 300 receptions and 30 receiving touchdowns by the time he retired in 1981 you would have just four guys on that list hall of famer dante lavelli hall of famer max speedy all 1960s team member gary collins and reggie rucker for this scheme you had a play by play man who was a cleveland sportscaster and was the pre-season voice of the browns and you had a color commentator who worked in cleveland and made his mark in the nfl with the browns you had two cleveland guys working the national browns oilers broadcast and let's just say that the oilers threw a fit about this on wednesday november 18th four days before the oilers were set to take on the browns euler's general manager lad herzeg called into the network and complained to network football coroner ted nathanson saying that the announcer should be removed from the broadcast because having two cleveland guys broadcasting at brown's game seemed unfair to them and seemed like it would be a heavily biased broadcast and considering the fact that the game was going out to 40 of the country the oilers didn't want their team painted in a negative light by the announcers and wanted to make sure that the broadcast was as impartial as possible as one euler spokesman said on the incident we weren't expressing questions about competency of the announcers both of them do a good job or they wouldn't be at the network level the only thing we were talking about is that they were cleveland sportscasters and the game is being seen in a large portion of texas in no way are we questioning their abilities as announcers however when nbc heard this complaint they were absolutely stunned to say the least they had no idea how to react at first and after debating they decided to go on the attack criticizing the oilers for having the nerve to voice this complaint one nbc spokesman said i think they would have bigger things to be worried about i've never heard this one before it's a first executive producer mike wiseman expressed shock disappointment and anger as well he said nbc sports is disappointing the oilers have publicly complained about donovan rupper our announcers are not biased toward one team versus another we don't tell the oilers who to play a quarterback they shouldn't tell us who to put his announcers before going any further i should know that the oilers never made any complaints in the past about rupper even though he was assigned to prior orders broadcast record was on the call for their week six game against the ringling patriots and for their week 8 game against the cincinnati bengals and was even on the call in 1986 when the browns played the oilers the oilers raised no objections over that it was just the fact that you had another cleveland guy in the booth that made them up in arms and wise when seven of these complaints were completely unfounded saying this weekend we have the buffalo new york jets game using marv albert who is from new york and worked for wnbc in new york and joe namath we haven't heard one thing from buffalo as nbc noted we're not going to assign games based off of potential conflicts of interest simply from a geographical standpoint furthermore even if nbc agreed with what the oilers were saying and even if nbc said that this was an oversight and that they should make a change it was way too late to do that for one every other broadcasting pair was taken and had already signed their games with some of the announcing duos higher up on the depth shark and games assigned to larger percentages of the country plus you don't just show up on the day of the game and call it there is a ton of prep work that goes into it involving hours upon hours of watching film conducting pre-game interviews and meetings with production members designed to hone in on certain elements during the broadcast on top of that there is logistical elements like booking flights and hotels you can't just change it on the fly especially not this close to the game if the oilers had a valid complaint they shouldn't have done so roughly 80 or so hours before kickoff in other words nbc just laughed in houston's face when they requested this change especially since this was literally the first time that any team ever called in to voice a complaint and reggie rocker was absolutely furious when he heard this news he thought it was a shot at his credibility as he bluntly said on the situation and the protest the network is never going to succumb to that kind of intimidation the oilers should spend their time worrying about the cleveland browns not about objectivity we'll take care of the objectivity on the telecast with all that out of the way we're finally ready to head to the astronomer for this absolutely critical amc central match-up because now on top of the high stakes that this game had on the standings we had the entire drama taking place in the broadcast booth with the oilers expressing fear as if this would be a biased broadcast and nbc basically telling the oilers to shove it that raises two final questions we have to talk about how did the game turn out on the field and how do the broadcasts turn out off of it well regarding the first point let's just say that when rucker told the oilers to spend their time worrying about the browns he wasn't kidding because holy cow this was ugly this was supposed to be houston's statement game to prove to the country that they were legit and that they were not pretenders and that they couldn't compete with the browns atop the afc central for division supremacy instead the game was anything but that houston busted out literally every trick playing their back pocket in the first quarter and it didn't work and when i mean every gadget play i mean every gadget play there is a fine line between creativity and desperation and man to this week of desperation they tried a flea flicker on the first play of the game they tried a double reverse for some inexplicable reason that they don't get they tried a direct snap to the running back on third and 23 which had predictably laughable results it was kind of funny to watch and see just how desperate the oilers were because not even fcs teams playing a number one ranked alabama are this desperate and that gives you a pretty good indication of how the game went because it was ugly with a capital u everything that could have gone wrong for the owners on this day did with the browns leading at nine nothing at the end of the first quarter and leading 26 nothing at the halftime break when you're down by four possessions in front of your home crowd in a division statement game yeah that's not good cleveland led 40-7 at the end of three quarters with houston's offense being unable to get anything going all day long outside of one 83-yard touchdown pass by moon to ernest gibbons and the browns ended up winning it by that final score line making it houston's biggest loss of the season as well as their biggest loss since 1983 which was one of the darkest days in franchise history as they lost 55 to 14 to the cincinnati bengals to drop to owen 10 on the season the stats were downright embarrassing cleveland had 27 first downs compared to just 11 for the oilers while the browns never turned it over the oilers turned it over a whopping six times cleveland held the ball for 42 minutes and 50 seconds holding the ball for roughly three quarters of a game the browns practically doubled houston's total yardage out gaining them 457-247 and more than quadruple their rushing output running for 200 yards compared to 43 for the oilers and starting quarterback warren moon had one of the worst games of his career he went 5 for 23 completing just 21.7 percent of his passes while throwing three interceptions and posting a passer rating of which is worse than if he did nothing but spiked the ball into the ground on every single play eventually moon got benched after posting what was the worst completion percentage of his career in a game where he threw at least 15 passes oddly enough the last time he played the browns back in 1986 he also went five for 23 not sure how that works out so on the field the game was a disaster but off the field how did the broadcast go were houston's concerns justified let's find out there are two elements with the broadcast that we have to talk about number one were the announcers biased could you tell that they worked for the browns before and could you tell that they were affiliated with cleveland in any way whatsoever and number two was the broadcast itself good was the broadcast tolerable on the ears and was the average person watching this game back in 1987 wanting to reach for their remote to hit the mute button and before we go any further i have to say this jim donovan was excellent there's a reason he continued to get games for the next decade with a network and there's a reason that he is still doing broadcast work in the nfl today as he is the voice of the cleveland browns i had no qualms with him whatsoever throughout the broadcast maybe he could have dialed it back just a bit but it was perfectly fine so with anything that i'm about to say in this segment and with this broadcast review i am not talking about jim donovan because he did good work as to play by play man having said that let's start with the first point could you tell there was bias well yes and no was reggie rupper rooting for the browns in any way whatsoever and could you tell he had an agenda no he was completely impartial in that regard early in the game the browns got a huge play down the field and rucker spent his analysis of the play talking about how the referees missed a call that should have had the play called back take a listen watch number 81 that looks like a pick there by cody rising i'm not sure why cody risin was able to make contact with that defensive back that's a little strange in that regard it was perfectly fine however bias isn't just about not rooting for one team or another and not using pronouns like we when talking about a specific team it's also about research and preparation if you know more about one team versus the other or you have no idea what you're talking about with regards to one team then that is a form of bias as well and when the broadcast started off rucker did nothing to quell the fears that euler's fans and personnel had when one of the very first things he said was something that made absolutely no sense whatsoever when you break it down warren moon is having an amazing season he is playing with confidence now everybody knows that he's been a fine passer but the thing that he is doing this year is running with the football and doing it well moon played six games so far in 1987 since he missed three games due to the strike in those six games moon had a grand total of 89 rushing yards averaging less than 15 yards per game on 4.05 yards per carry yeah he's been quite the runner this year alright compared to previous years over the first three years he was as mobile as philip rivers and now he's lamar jackson here's what makes no sense about this if you look at his numbers through the first six games of every season he played at that point from 1984 to 87 the numbers are practically identical on a year-to-year basis he had 74 rushing yards for the first six games in 1984 98 rushing yards for the first six games in 1985 and 94 rushing yards through the first six games in 1986. in fact every single rushing statistic on a first six game basis from rushing yards to rushing touchdowns to the yards per carry was better in 1986 compared to 1987. so i have no idea how rucker can say with a straight face that statistically speaking moon was having his best season running the ball and did nothing in that department in his first three years when this was actually one of his worst starts to his season in that department in that regard rucker showed immense bias and lack of preparation as for the second point rucker was his usual self and it's not surprising that by the end of the 1980s rucker was no longer working games in fact the biggest surprise might be the fact that he still had a job for so long after that whole debacle from 1984. imagine having to listen to this riveting analysis and insight for three hours he's into it the kick is up and it is good and the browns get a turnover but end up with three points they probably feel they should have had seven but the rookie jagger knocks it through and they now lead over houston by a count of nine to nothing but the one thing that cleveland does do there is they get back the point that they missed on the extra point fiasco and at the same time they're going to make houston score twice in some fashion to to gain the lead rucker sure has a way with words this game did not move him up the announcing depth chart i'll just put it that way but even despite rocker not being good at his job it's still hard to imagine something happening like this where a team demands that a broadcaster be removed from a game not because of anything that they did in the past but rather just the fear that they would do a bad job and be biased the idea that a team would publicly complain about joe buck or jim nance or iron eagle calling one of their games and would aggressively pressure the network to do this and remove them from the broadcast seems somewhat absurd in today's climate but back in 1987 for the team formerly known as the lovey blues they weren't feeling a whole lot of love for their broadcasting team get your official jaguar gear 9 merchandise by going to jg9shop.com and be sure to like this video ring the notification bell and subscribe down below if you haven't already as it helps the channel out a lot and be sure to check out twitch every 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