SAN DIEGO _ Watching Dan Fouts pilot the "Air Coryell" Chargers was a thrill not only for San Diegans on hand in Mission Valley but football fans throughout the United States.
A boy in Queens, for instance, watched from 2,400 miles away. He enjoyed the bearded passer and the royal blue uniforms and the Chargers zooming back and forth on the family television.
"You knew they were going to chuck it all over the field 40 times a game, and that was exciting," Ian Eagle said this week. "That was a special time in the NFL. It was hard not to gravitate to those games."
Eagle watched Chargers telecasts as a boy and a teenager from his family home in Forest Hills, a community in the Queens borough of New York City.
Having decided years earlier, at age 8, that he'd become a sports broadcaster, Eagle kept a sharp ear out as well.
Calls by broadcasters Charlie Jones and Dick Enberg of NBC resonated with him as much as the football action.
Come this Sunday when two NFL teams meet in the Los Angeles Coliseum, the play-by-play broadcaster for the CBS telecast will be Eagle, 49.
His broadcast partner?
Dan Fouts.
While Eagle may be biased about Don Coryell's former point man, he's still a fan.
"He's the best, truly," Eagle said of Fouts, his NFL telecast partner of the past nine years. "We have a real friendship. Part of the reason it's worked so well on the air is it's genuine. Dan and I became fast friends. We share a similar sensibility, a similar sense of humor and a similar approach to how to call a game."
Eagle and Fouts, 67, have good chemistry, and that makes for a better broadcast.
"It isn't brain surgery. Have some fun _ but make sure the viewers are getting the details of what they need," Eagle said.
