New Prospect (Higher Quality!)

Song - New Prospect

Artist(s) - Zack Laurence

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Bruton BRN 13 (New Prospects)

Featured Highlight - Dolphins @ Eagles, 1987

I'm not done writing about new NFL Primetime songs, but pretty much everything left to post that's new or unidentified is from New Primetime (i.e., the 2019-present ESPN+ edition of the show).  Unfortunately, my YouTube posts of New Primetime stuff don't get a lot of views.  The videos with highlights from the '80s and '90s—the classic era of NFL Primetime—definitely seem to get more action.  Some of those clips, however, were not the best quality (especially the ones from 1988).  GodzFire's acquisition of that huge lot of early NFL Primetime episodes last spring created an opportunity to post better quality videos with some of the songs from that era.  I was originally planning on posting those after posting (most) everything from New Primetime, but I kinda feel a need to try and rejuice my channel first—getting closer to the views I was getting last spring-to-summer at least.  As an experiment, I'm going to post a few "Higher Quality" clips of older tracks before getting back to New Primetime stuff.  I plan on going back-and-forth between the two post types (or something like that) afterward.  I hope you enjoy it!

The first-HQ-post belong to Zack Laurence's "New Prospect." New Prospect was one of the staples of the first two years of NFL Primetime.  It was used seemingly every regular-season week from Week 5 of 1987 (or Week 6 if you count the cancelled Week 3) up through the end of 1988.  This time, the included game highlight is the Dolphins' visit to Veterans Stadium to play the Eagles in '87.  The contest featured two star quarterbacks, Dan Marino & Randall Cunningham, albeit playing for middling teams that would not make the playoffs that year.  There's also a nice production blooper at the beginning of the video.  Have fun watching!

Original New Prospect Link

 

 

Lots of Prospects

Song - New Prospect

Artist(s) - Zack Laurence

Released - 1984

Primetime Usage - 1987-88

Contained on - Bruton BRN 13 (New Prospects), Bruton BVA005 (The Zack Laurence Anthology)

Featured Highlight - Chiefs @ Oilers, 1988


If you like heavy brass with a driving bass line, then this track is for you.  Zack Laurence's "New Prospect" is straightforward, loud, in your face, and it gets the job done.  As a result, it's not surprising ESPN featured it prominently during the first two years of NFL Primetime.  New Prospect is one of many songs with the word "Prospect" in the title from Laurence's appropriately titled, variations-on-a-theme album New Prospects.  This LP was never officially converted to digital as far as I know (though amateur uploads are easy to find through the magic of Google & YouTube), but about half of it is contained on Bruton's The Zack Laurence Anthology linked above.  I haven't discovered a whole lot of info about Laurence, but I've found him to be one of the more prolific & talented production music composers of the 1970s & '80s.

Week 6 of 1988 was not kind to quarterbacks.  A disproportionate number of signal callers suffered injuries during that week, and the Houston Oilers were not immune.  With Warren Moon not even dressed, backup "Commander" Cody Carlson dislocated his thumb early in their game against Kansas City.  Former replacement QB (and ex-Montana QB) Brent Pease then came in and "led" his team to a 7-6 victory despite terrible numbers.  Here's the highlight:

NFL Primetime Music - Introduction

NFL Primetime, which aired in its weekly, classic form on ESPN from 1987-2005, put a unique imprint on the memories of NFL fans.  Chris Berman's wit and eventual use of corny nicknames cemented him as one of the stars of the network, while Tom Jackson's concise, accurate, & often blunt analysis made him the most refreshing football commentator on TV.  The first 11 years of NFL Primetime also featured an all-star team of co-hosts including John Saunders, Robin Roberts, Bill Pidto, & the late Stuart Scott.  Even legendary sports wordsmith Pete Axthelm, who died in early 1991, provided entertaining editorials and betting analysis in the show's early years.  All of these factors helped make NFL Primetime one of the best highlight shows ever made and vastly superior to anything that's come since the 2006 change to the NFL TV arrangement, but—come on—the #1 reason people loved the show was its awesome soundtrack.

NFL Primetime music has been highly sought on the internet for more than a decade now.  I'm sure, if you found this blog anyway, that you've seen a set of 16+ NFL Primetime songs either posted on youtube or for download elsewhere.  I don't quite know how all of these songs were obtained, though I believe some were ripped from the now forgotten NFL Primetime PS2 game that came out in 2002, but I have found actual documentation on some of them.  Also—in providing a more unique flavor to this blog—I have found a lot of songs not contained in this set, including most of the tracks utilized in the early days of the show.  The vast majority of what I've discovered can be located on the various production music label networks that populate the web.  Well known figures in the production music world created some of these compositions, such as Trevor Bastow, Zack Laurence, John Devereaux, & Alan Hawkshaw, and their quality stands far above the average you'd expect for library stuff.  I've still got a long way to go to find everything, though, given the mind-numbing amount of production music that's available to stream online.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will post information about the NFL Primetime music I have definitively identified.  After that, I will start detailing the songs that are less than fleshed out.  This will start with songs I've discovered without credits and then finish with the tracks I have yet to find at all.  Hopefully this blog will be popular enough by that point that you readers can then help me out with this process.  No song will be available for download on this blog.  However, links to production libraries where these songs can be legally streamed/obtained will be provided whenever possible.  I will also include one game highlight from NFL Primetime as an example of each song's use on the show.  I hope that, one day, this site can put together a complete list of every song used for highlights over the entire run of the show.  Enjoy, and thanks for reading!