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This excerpt comes from Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports:

Memo to ESPN: Former NBA star and TNT analyst Charles Barkley is a better color analyst than either Tony Kornheiser or Joe Theismann. Barkley was personable, funny, wry and actually made a few decent points during his cameo appearance on Monday Night Football when Chicago played at Arizona.

Which jogged me to reply, and since I can’t be certain he’ll publish my opinion, here it is for the world to see:

Couldn’t agree with you more that Tony Kornheiser and Joe Theismann are just … plain … awful.

I had thought the problem with ESPN’s Sunday night booth was a bad mix of two know-it-alls — Theismann and Paul Maguire — who didn’t respect each other enough to back down from a fight, and a play-by-play man — Mike Patrick — who, while great at calling the action, simply lacked the kind of booth leadership of even a Don Criqui, nevermind a Pat Summerall.

ESPN’s Monday night booth makes it obvious the problem is ESPN’s management, which is clearly incapable of hiring anything but the same old one-trick, sarcastic ponies — which, when combined with competent booth men, makes me glad I subscribed to the NFL’s Field Pass play-by-play Internet feed.

Kornheiser might be a very funny writer and a mildly entertaining talking head, but he clearly doesn’t know enough about football to be a color man, nor does he have the ability to work off other people for comedic effect; at least, not without coming off as a lout.

Theismann comes off as a fairly knowledgeable guy, but his delivery transcends condescending, which clearly rattles the cages of his loudmouth co-color analysts, which in turn degenerates into name-calling and petty insults, which Theismann allows without reproach, which in turn makes him come off like that nerdy guy in the office who could someday be president, if he’d just stand up for his ideas for once and stop letting people push him around.

Mike Tirico is a lot better than Patrick was at containing the bully-versus-nerd nonsense caused by ESPN’s ham-fisted attempt to combine knowledge and humor, but Solomon himself couldn’t make these guys look good together.

Note that ESPN’s pre- and post-game show has the most volatile mix of personalities possible: Michael Irvin, about whom Tiki Barber and Tom Jackson couldn’t be more correct; Mike Ditka, who was exposed as a fraud in New Orleans and puts more research into insults for Irvin than insights into the game; Jackson, who comes across as the only panelist who’s ever read something other than a playbook, but doesn’t have the sense to not call Irvin “retarded” on-air; Steve Young, who’s clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time on that show; Ron Jaworski, who’s been cashing in a mediodre career (72.78 QB rating) for 20 years; and Chris Mortensen, the only one of the panelists with enough sense to get on air, ignore the other panelists, say his piece, then leave.

What holds it all together? The same person who’s basically given whatever legitimacy ESPN ever had or ever will have: Chris Berman. He’s slipping a bit, but he’s still a master of the TV medium, and Lord knows that anyone who can host that show without it devolving into a late-night club shooting ought to be highly praised, indeed (although, if the show did devolve into a club shooting, that would probably result in more NFL players stopping by … at least, more Bengals, anyway).

I’m not sure Berman would be the right choice for the Monday night booth; I know Stuart Scott wouldn’t be. But at this rate, I’d infinitely prefer Suzie Kolber to call the game alone. I’d want to kiss her, too, just for sparing us all the buffoons they’ve got in the booth right now.