Tag: Features

When the Bills were beating the 49ers on Monday Night Football in Week 13, ESPN wanted to demonstrate Buffalo was running away with sole possession of first place in the AFC East for the first time in 25 years. Most broadcasts would just show a nifty standings graphic with the Bills in first place and a list of the teams following them, but this time ESPN decided on an alternate route.

In an animated short paying homage to the Christmas classic Home Alone, Bills quarterback Josh Allen was depicted inside a home with a brief overview of Buffalo’s playoff history while Patriots quarterback Cam Newton and Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick peek into the house.

That video, like others that have given the venerable Monday Night Football franchise a fresh feel, was the work of David Sparrgrove and Joe Accordino. While the graphics tend to be funny and entertaining and manage to loop pop culture references in with wacky animations, the main goal is to educate the viewer with a collaborative effort.

“For instance, you referenced Home Alone,” Accordino said. “The fact that the Bills are all alone in first place this late in the season for the first time since 1995, you start brainstorming. So I take the lead with that process, but I have a lot of help from my friends … Even my wife has given me some ideas over the years. So, what we do is at that point, we’ve matched content to the idea. Then, I call David. We start talking about the content, the idea and a lot of times David will say, ‘Oh, that’s a nice idea, but I got something that might work even better.’ And we start to fine tune exactly what we want these things to look like.”

Accordino and Sparrgrove lead a group that produces the graphic animations, which are more involved than they look. Outside of the straight up ideas, hours of research is involved to identify which talking points will accompany each graphic.

“I’m the one who animates it. I don’t do every animation that airs, but I’m part of the team,” Sparrgrove said. “I’ll usually handle one or two of them. I happened to animate the Home Alone one. When it comes to me, there’s usually a pretty good concept that’s been fleshed out and also I want to note that one of the things we pride ourselves on doing is that Joe and I, over the years, we’ve kind of amassed a little list for ideas that we’ve wanted to do.”

Sparrgrove mentioned that “bumper cars” were an example of an idea that they would tuck away to potentially come back to during a broadcast. However, the concept idea for the animation has to somewhat lineup with the information that’s being presented on the screen. “What Joe and his team concentrate on is the stats and information first,” Sparrgrove said.

“Joe and I crack up all the time because he’ll say, ‘Yea, we want a guy walking through a pirate town exploding the town,’ ” Sparrgrove said with a chuckle. “That’s the simple concept! The information, the statistics, the storyline is always what drives the boat because ultimately, Monday Night Football is about football, it’s about great matchups and it’s about entertainment.”

That’s part of what makes the graphics on Monday Night Football stand out so much: at times they can be the polar opposite of how the rest of the broadcast is presented. The current broadcast team of Louis Riddick, Steve Levy, and Brian Griese often offer a no-nonsense, strictly football affair. The graphics provide a break in the action that also grab attention with information presented in a way the viewer isn’t used to.

The on-air talent gets involved in the process of the graphics as well. Every Sunday morning, the graphics team walks through what’s going to be on television with Riddick, Levy, and Griese.

Seeing how the booth crew reacted to the graphics was a pivotal moment.  As with any new idea, the graphics team was not sure how their work would be received. Then they saw the often straight-faced announcers smiling and laughing. “One of the highlights for me and David is how much fun the talent has had with our graphics this year,” Accordino said. “Steve and Brian and Louis do a fantastic job of interacting with it.”

The cartoons have evolved over the past four years, Accordino said; he was quick to credit Sparrgrove for pushing the form.

“One of the first ones we did was before Deshaun Watson, the Houston Texans really cycled through quarterbacks,” Sparrgrove continued. “So we had quarterbacks coming into a saloon, one after the other. That was one of the first ones where we said we’re going to integrate these customs into the game as a way to elevate and enhance the storyline.”

Another graphic that they highlighted was one that involved Joe Flacco and his red-hot postseason run from the Ravens’ Super Bowl XLVII win over the San Francisco 49ers. The graphic aired in 2016,  around the time when the NFL was starting to relax on some of the celebration rules, so Accordino and Sparrgrove wanted to capitalize.

Flacco hadn’t gotten off to a hot start during the 2016 season, so they made a graphic to commemorate the last time Flacco did play elite football. With two giant Ravens wings on his back and Flacco’s avatar dancing on the screen.

WHY pic.twitter.com/2Gz3MoSfh9

— Christian Arcand (@ChristianArcand) November 10, 2020

One of their most popular graphics came during the 2018 season, a few months after Marvel’s Infinity War had been released in theaters. The Seahawks happened to be playing on Monday Night and their vaunted Legion of Boom defense had gone through a ton of turnover in the years leading up to that game. So, they decided to have Thanos snap his fingers as the original members of the Legion of Boom disappeared off the screen, leaving only Bobby Wagner, Earl Thomas, and K.J. Wright.

The NFL, and by extension its broadcast partners, tends to take the game of football quite seriously. Sometimes they go too far, and the presentation feels stoic and stale. That’s why these animations have resonated so much. The next time you see one — or see people on Twitter laughing about one — you’ll understand the somewhat haphazard process behind creating the short films meant to make you laugh while also informing you about the game.

“Everything we try to do from a cartoon perspective,” Sparrgrove said, “we really are accentuating the most important stats and story lines.”

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