Greeson: Bad sports broadcasting can ruin the best games

Ah, the holidays. Plenty of time with friends and family, and a load of sports on television for all audiences.

Debating between the details of Aunt Edna’s church trip to Jordan or the 12th replay of the Idaho Famous Potato Bowl — and it’s really a lot closer than it should, sorry Aunt Edna — the decisive blow often is the announcing. Good sports broadcasting can be almost as entertaining as the action, and bad sports broadcasting is often worse than the worst game imaginable.

Face it gang, TV’s coverage of live sporting events dictates a great deal about today’s sports world. From the start times to the duration to even some of the match-ups, the TV broadcast is the first thought (that’s what happens when TV is paying that kind of dollars).

Today we’ll trot out our five biggest pet peeves we heard this weekend. Feel free to add your own, and here’s saying if this can create waves, well, like Fred Sanford, let’s enjoy the ripple.

1) “The quarterback position.” As in “Aaron Rodgers is really excelling at the quarterback position.” Uh, guys, do you think the audience may get confused and think Rodgers is excelling at the left tackle position or worse yet excelling at the quarterback supposition or the quarterback corollary? Nothing is worse than being a sports fan and being patronized, and yes we realize that the announcer (or writer) can’t assume that everyone in the audience knows Rodgers is a quarterback. But everyone with an IQ over 60 and a vocabulary with more than 50 words knows that quarterback is a position. Lose the extra words, it just waters down the point. (And yes, we realize the irony of someone who writes this much calling for fewer words, but still.) And that brings us to...

2) It’s football, we know it’s football. If we’re watching a football game with football players on the football field at the football stadium, we don’t need every third sentence to include the phrase “National Football League.” We’ll call this the Ron Jaworski Rule.

3) Yes, he was serious and no he was not kidding you. And no matter how high an announcer’s voice gets or how loud the volume, asking, “Are you serious?” or “Are you kidding me?” simply can be translated to, “Wow, I have nothing to add here but can’t let there be any type of silence, lest, you realize that I really have nothing to add anywhere. Sigh.”

4) No rehearsing. If an announcer has pre-prepared similes or a routine or their reactions, then they have failed. This is not stand-up comedy gang, this is live sports. Now preparation is hugely important — there’s no substitute for being prepared and those that are like Jay Bilas and Chris Collinsworth are much better off for it — but pre-packaged schtick is insulting. For all of us.

5) Let’s go to locker room at halftime. Admittedly TV broadcast rights pay the bills, but no matter how big those checks are, the halftime interview is awful. Period. (Well, unless you get Joe Kines talking about the stopping the inside trap.) Seriously, when has anyone ever heard anything worth our time, the reporters’ time or the coaches’ time during a trot to the locker room that goes something like this:

Reporter: “Coach, you gave up 435 yards and five touchdowns in the first half. What are you going to talk about in the locker room.”

Coach: “Well, there are some things we need to figure out and in truth I’m really curious what our guys think is Sandra Bullock’s best movie. I’m old-school and lean toward “Speed,” but there are a lot “Blind Side” fans in there. Thanks.”

Reporter: “There you have it guys, down 35-0, and coach has some big issues to deal with.”

As a viewing audience, we don’t ask for much. Really, we don’t. Just don’t annoy us to the point that we’re forced to choose those Aunt Edna stories.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6273.