Dierdorf
Is A CBS Man Now By George Stahl NEW YORK (AQB)--CBS Sports' newest NFL analyst made it clear Wednesday where his loyalties are. "What they do with Monday Night, quite frankly, is up to them," said former Monday Night Football analyst Dan Dierdorf. "I work at CBS, and my only concern is improving CBS coverage in any way I can. "The only thing I can worry about is the game I do with Verne [Lundquist]. My focus now is becoming kind of narrow." Dierdorf admitted in the conference call Wednesday that "it was not the most amicable of partings [with ABC]." He said he became annoyed when no one at ABC could tell him what his future there was. "The only frustration I had at ABC was I just wanted someone to tell me exactly what was going on and exactly what they wanted me to do," the 49-year-old said. "I went in before the season ever started, and said 'I realize this is the last year of my contract. If you want to make a change, I’m a big boy. Let’s discuss it. Let’s deal with it, and we’ll all just go our separate ways.' "But I could never get them to commit one way or the other. Until finally, right before the Pro Bowl, I knew it was over and nobody would say it was over, so I figured I was the one that had to say it." Dierdorf was happy that he announced his decision before the Pro Bowl, his last ABC telecast, because it gave him a chance to say his final farewells to his co-workers. "When you spend 12 years working with the same crew, and we were an attacked crew for all that time, anybody who works in this business will tell you that it goes beyond just calling it a friendship. Those people are all my family to me, and I was glad I got a chance to say goodbye." However, Dierdorf was embarrassed by the attention he received at the end of the telecast. "I didn’t want them to do anything, and we weren’t going to do anything until, at the very end of the game, Al Michaels absolutely insisted that he get the camera turned on in the booth and he wanted to say something to me. That was awkward for me because I would have preferred to just have done the game and signed off." Dierdorf's signoff, though, almost lasted through next season. "I was strongly committed to not working this fall, partly because of the way that I left ABC. I just didn’t think that anything would flip my switch. That was a less-than-happy time for me, and I just didn’t think anything would make me feel good about going back into television." Dierdorf reportedly will get paid $1 million a year to join Lundquist on CBS' No. 2 broadcasting. That's down from the $1.75 million annual salary he made as part of ABC's Monday Night Football. And what does Dierdorf think of the remaining two-man team of Michaels and Boomer Esiason on MNF? "All I can say is I hope they do very well. First of all, in Al Michaels, you’ve got a real professional and, in Boomer, you’ve got someone who in reality hasn’t broadcast that many football games but will get better with every one. "They’ll be fine." Click here to read more quotes from the conference call. Back
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