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Ailing Jennings ponders next career move

Neil Best

September 9, 2008

When Dave Jennings' playing career was winding down, he promised himself he would not continue to punt just for the sake of punting.

"I often said, 'When it's time for me to go, I'm going to go,"' Jennings said yesterday, recalling that he finally did so in 1987, after 14 seasons with the Giants and Jets.

Now Jennings is mulling a crossroads in his 20-year career in radio, also spent with the Jets and Giants. The Giants took him off the air after uneven preseason performances in which he seemed to struggle more than ever with the effects of Parkinson's disease.

"I haven't done a good job, and I want to do a good job," Jennings, 56, acknowledged. "It just hasn't been up to my standard."

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The trick is finding a solution that keeps him involved but gives him a chance to succeed. The process is ongoing after a week of what he described as "back and forth" between him and the Giants.

Jennings, who last season switched from the game booth to pre- and postgame work, is reluctant to be limited to taped pieces. But he admitted the grind of long days is difficult.

Night games are the toughest on him; he did not work Thursday's season opener.

"With this thing I have, it's something that does not bode well for that kind of atmosphere," he said. "It's a little bit rough. But I'm not looking for sympathy."

(His absence isn't the only change on the radio team. Health issues also have sidelined 72-year-old Dick Lynch, an analyst for 40 years.)

Asked about his overall health, Jennings paused for several seconds and said: "It's decent. It could be better, and it could be worse, I guess."

The Giants brought him in in 2002, when he was fired after 14 years analyzing Jets games.

"I don't want to put the Giants on the spot here, because they've been tremendous to me," he said. "I don't want to make them look like the bad guys.

"If they happen to cut the cord with me, they have been great, they really have. I love being there, but again, it's like when I was punting. I didn't want to keep going just to keep going."

Strahan crashes Fox party

Michael Strahan fit right in at Fox's studio frat party Sunday, from expressing opinions such as that the Cowboys are the best team in the league to getting off lines about coaches calling signals into defensive players' helmets:

"When you're out there getting banged in the head, the last thing you want to hear is a coach. When they start banging coaches over the head to make sure they make the right calls, then they'll have an understanding."

It's too soon to tell whether the Dan Patrick-Keith Olbermann reunion on NBC will make a dent in that crowded studio. But it's not too soon to say Cris Carter is an upgrade over Emmitt Smith on ESPN.

"It's like going to an amusement park," Carter said last month of his move from HBO to ESPN. "You get off the roller coaster and are like, 'Man, can I ride again?' And I'm getting on a bigger one, and more exciting, and more opportunity and more visibility."

Although Carter had only nice things to say about "Inside the NFL," late of HBO, he said ESPN offers more possibilities.

"Now I feel like I'm doing a football show," he said. "It's not driven by highlights . . . The content is mine, and I have to deliver it."