Who’s Next To Endure A Season With Albert?

Cris Collinsworth and Marv Albert gave it one year, and now, sadly, it’s over.

“The only condition I asked for in my contract was that when I change my phone number, nobody gives it to Marv,” Collinsworth said.

Terms of the separation were not announced, but we can assume grounds were extreme mental cruelty.

Last week, NBC announced it was moving Collinsworth out of the booth and into the studio, where he will sit alongside Mike Ditka, Joe Gibbs and Greg Gumbel every NFL Sunday in lieu of Joe Montana.

After a year alongside Albert, the studio is going to seem pretty tame.

“There’s this psychiatrist I met,” Collinsworth said, his voice crackling with evil laughter. “I think maybe he’s somebody who could help Marv just a little bit.”

Collinsworth’s move creates an opening for a game analyst, and NBC has hired a new one in ex-coach Sam Wyche.

“I talked to Sam Wyche, and I didn’t want to scare him off - but the rumor is that maybe Sam will work with Marv, and Sam was asking me, ‘What about Tom Hammond, what about Marv Albert?”’ Collinsworth said. “I told Sam, ‘You might want to sit down for this one.’

“Working with Marv, God love him, is like going to school. You don’t have to worry about the next game or the car ride home or even the commercial break, because if you say something he thinks is wrong or off the wall, he gives you this look immediately. And he’s on the phone to Dick Ebersol trying to get you fired the next day.”

Now, almost none of these scurrilous accusations is true, but that doesn’t mean Albert doesn’t have a few irritating idiosyncrasies. For example, he apparently is particularly meticulous about the on-air opening, and Collinsworth and Albert’s former partner, Paul Maguire, have exchanged war stories about that.

“Paul brought up the opening on camera, and he said, ‘Did you ever hear the line: Do you really want to say it that way?’ I exploded laughing,” Collinsworth said. “It doesn’t matter what you say, you get that line.”

And then there’s the foot stomping - sort of like the old “I can’t stop my leg” routine that Robert Klein used to do.

“He has this foot thing. He gets it going and starts stomping on the ground,” Collinsworth said. “I didn’t know what it was. The first game we ever did, we’re sitting in Cleveland and I thought Mr. Ed was asking for food, stomping the ground with his foot.

“With Marv, you never know. He never cracks a smile. You don’t know whether he’s joking or there’s a rat under the table. He does this bit, and then he looks over at me for a comment, and I can’t do it. I’m holding down my cough button and I can’t let go of it. He makes you laugh, and he drives you crazy, then he coaches you, patting you on the back. You run through the full range of emotions with Marv.”

Out takes

Fox Sports is expected to announce that former New York Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield will join the network as a studio analyst in its first season of major league baseball coverage.

That gives Fox a studio analyst and three play-by-play announcers - Joe Buck, Chip Caray and Thom Brennaman, all sons of announcers. Fox still needs to hire another studio analyst and a host, another play-by-play announcer and four analysts.