John Madden called back Fred Gaudelli on Tuesday with an answer. The veteran executive producer of NBC Sports’ Sunday Night Football had asked his old colleague the previous night how to handle games potentially played in front of no fans, kept away by COVID-19-related restrictions.
The conventional wisdom is that broadcasters, to mimic games of the past, will pipe in artificial crowd noise during the telecast. The Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster’s reply, Gaudelli recounted: Don’t.
“He said, ‘When I first left the coaching profession and went to broadcasting, there was something about it that I just felt was missing and I couldn’t really put my finger on it,’” Gaudelli recalled. “He said, ‘Then I realized that I wasn’t hearing the sound that I had grown accustomed to hearing — as a player and as a coach. I never coached from the box, I coached from the field.’ He said to me, ‘Fred,…
