5 replacements for Mike Tirico on Monday Night Football

4. Joe Tessitore

One of the better broadcasters to emerge in recent years on ESPN’s network of channels is Joe Tessitore. He is best known now for his work covering college football on both ESPN and ABC. Tessitore is also the host of the college football pre-game show on the SEC Network, SEC Nation.

While Tessitore hasn’t done any significant NFL coverage to date, he’s great at what he does and perhaps he’s at the point in his broadcasting career to become more versatile than just covering Power 5 football?

He’d have strong chemistry with Gruden. They could pair quite nicely this fall doing Monday Night Football games and national audiences would already be very familiar with Tessitore from his strong work in the college game. At worst case scenario, he’d certainly know a lot about the young up-and-coming players in the game from his time doing Power 5 games.

The lack of NFL experience probably prevents ESPN from replacing Tirico with Tessitore, but Tessitore remains a very strong play-by-play guy in ESPN’s arsenal should they look to go in a different direction with their Monday Night Football lineup.

Then again, it may prove too costly to have him leave the college ranks, as he normally calls on of the three biggest SEC games each week in addition to doing a fine job hosting SEC Nation. Perhaps Tessitore best belongs in the college game, but it would be interesting to see him doing Monday Night Football instead.

Next: 3. Bob Wischusen