The lost art of sports broadcasting

By now, we’re all familiar with Frank Caliendo’s comedy routines poking fun at football broadcaster John Madden. Aside from his obscenely accurate impression, Caliendo’s routine is inherently aided by the fact that Madden really does take enormous amounts of time to describe simple football plays and strategy.

But recently, I’ve started to think that Caliendo has identified a greater trend in sports—simply horrible broadcasting.

For those who aren’t frequent viewers, a traditional sports broadcast consists of one play-by-play announcer who describes the actual happenings on the field and one color analyst who discusses how and why certain actions occurred.

With the explosion of television offerings, more and more sports are on the air. And while this is certainly a good thing, the amount of intelligent announcers unfortunately has not increased, resulting in lots of confusing and underwhelming broadcasts.

But even in the realm of highly visible sporting events, broadcasting these days is just plain awful. While watching the Yankees-Twins this weekend, one color analyst tried to make a point by comparing pitcher Mariano Rivera’s cut fastball to a BMW changing lanes on the German Autobahn. I guess I sort of get the reference, but then again NO, I don’t—and why isn’t there a more appropriate way to say “Gee, that pitch moves a lot”?

On another note, I watched a hockey game over the weekend on Versus, which is such a pathetic attempt at a top-rate sporting network that it actually broadcasts Ivy League football occasionally. Anyway, aside from mispronouncing all of the players’ names, upon returning from a commercial break, the broadcaster raised his voice and described a dramatic scoring attempt before he realized that the play on the screen was only a replay from earlier in the game.

These examples cause me to reconsider what the true goal of having broadcasters is. One could argue that an announcer’s job is to explain the game to beginners. But I’ve watched lots of games with beginners before and rarely do I see anyone being helped by the announcer. Even if a broadcaster describes some basic strategy, it is never enough to serve as an efficient primer for someone who doesn’t understand the game.

Another standard role of the broadcasting team is to provide high-level analysis to complement what a knowledgeable fan already knows. I will admit, at times my viewing experience is enhanced by the color analyst, but unfortunately, this rarely happens. When it does, it’s only once or twice a game. The bottom line is that if providing intelligent analysis to seasoned fans is the primary goal, most broadcasting teams fall way short.

Sometimes broadcasters supply interesting biographical information on the players, but oftentimes most fans end up laughing or ignoring the stupid anecdotes or worthless pieces of information about what the backup kicker likes to eat for breakfast.

Furthermore, fans of every sport agree that watching their home team play on national television is one of the worst experiences, given the lack of knowledge that the temporary announcers know about their team. While it’s nice to hear the announcers compliment your team and players in front of a national audience, this novelty quickly wears off when the players’ names are mispronounced and when the whole game is spent talking about surface-level information that you already know.

National broadcasters often take over for local teams during the playoffs and sadly, just when you need your hometown announcers the most, they are gone in favor of bland, unknowledgeable, and neutral announcers.

While things are bad, there are plenty of bright spots out there to prove me dead wrong. Just in my own experience, I am lucky to listen to Steve Stone analyze the White Sox games where he frequently predicts the next pitch based on his extensive knowledge of the game. Stone takes a lazy day at the ballpark and forces the viewer to think critically about the levels of strategy involved.

Similarly, Pat Foley’s broadcasts of the Blackhawks games are a pleasure to listen to, and Foley often knows where the puck is going and if the goalie saw the shot before any of the players do. My suitemate would never let me off the hook if I didn’t give an honorable mention to Mike Blowers who made “The Call of the Year” on a home run in Seattle (you need to watch this YouTube video if you haven’t seen it).

But to return to the problem at hand, sports broadcasts these days are filled with unimaginative announcers and former players with flashy names but no brains. ESPN is, in my mind, the number one violator on this front as the company seemingly hires every former player who’s itching for a job. I’m sorry, but Dusty Baker has never been articulate in his life and can’t possibly add much to Baseball Tonight.

In my opinion, the Olympics are the only sporting events that consistently have intelligent broadcasters who are capable of making potentially boring sports interesting and exciting.

So what’s the moral of this story? The moral is that fans must rely on newspapers—such as this fine publication—to provide them with expert analysis. And while some newspapers these days are void of serious analysis, rest assured that Spectator will definitely provide you with solid analysis for each and every game this school loses.

I don’t know how to fix this problem or even what the ideal situation would be, but maybe pressing that mute button and taking a trip back to the days of silent film isn’t such a bad idea. Just remember: “If a receiver catches the ball in the end zone, that’s gonna be a touchdown.”

Jacob Shapiro is a List College senior majoring in history and Talmud.

Tags: Sports, Jacob Shapiro