In theory, sideline reporters should be pretty useful, just because that’s where a lot of the game is being “played.” They could tell us which players are arguing with the coaches (or other players), who’s going to be benched or given more playing time, when a team is deciding to try a new tactic, if and when confusion and mistakes are happening, injury updates, etc. Hell, even their inane 20 second interview with the Head Coach at halftime could easily be interesting if the reporter knew enough about football to ask a specific question about strategy.
Is Pam Ward still doing play by play for ESPN college football? I don’t think I’ve seen her all year. She was not very good. I remember the awfulannouncing blog having a reward in her name…the Pammies. Think of the Razzies.
This gives me the opportunity to share my college-age sister’s, new to football as of last pre-season, wisdom on women and the sport. Watching MNF last night, we were talking about the sideline reporters contributing so little. Instead of having token women, she said, “The way to get more women to watch football is to show less Kyle Orton and more Wes Welker.”
Orton is good, but damn is he ugly.
(I also learned Tom Brady is hot despite his homeless person hair and that she would gladly accept an invitation back to his cardboard box.)
If anything the broadcasters should switch to just using one broadcaster. In 1980, NBC famously tried using no announcers in a game (apparently the only sounds you heard were crowd noise and PA announcements). NBC didn’t repeat the experiment, supposedly because viewers found it lacked ambiance. But on the occasions I’ve heard an experienced play-by-play man just broadcast by himself, it’s terrific. He can now use his own sense of timing without being interrupted by a blowhard color commentator who only got his job for his name value. Plus the visuals are so sophisticated and omnipresent that you don’t need to hear a voice explaining the game every second.
I remember watching that no-announcer game. I thought it was pretty cool, but it’s probably not something that I’d want for every game.
I really like color commentary that provides some good insight into the game (Cris Collinsworth & Dan Fouts come to mind). But some of these guys are pretty awful (Matt Millen comes immediately to mind).
Agreed – it was interesting, but kind of weird. In a sense, it was like being at the game in person (though with much better views), as that’s largely what you heard.
The way that games are broadcast has changed considerably over the past 30 years, with a lot more usage of replays and graphics. I suspect (though I may be wrong) that not having an announcer would hamper the usefulness of a lot of those.
I used to really enjoy Paul Zimmerman’s report cards on the NFL announcers on SI.com; he’s a big fan of announcers who actually add intelligence to the broadcast, and was convinced that the networks (particularly in the case of MNF) pushed the announcers to not get too sophisticated in their analysis, for fear of turning off the casual fan.
Not to stray to far from the subject - but what freaking moron gave Matt Millen a job? Sure, he did announcing work before his tenure with the Lions. But he was the without question worst GM a franchise in professional sports has ever seen. The Lions went from merely bad to a pathetic joke. Millen is the father of the winless season, the waster of countless draft picks. Whenever I am stuck watching a game with this blowhard I boggle at the balls it takes for him to suggest that anybody is doing something poorly. He should follow-up every critical statement with: that play sucked and I should know, I am Matt Millen.
Only in sports could somebody be so bad and get rewarded.
While I agree with your point re Millen, unfortunately there are plenty of other non sports examples of rewarding failure. Just look at the golden parachutes Wall Street gave itself after the economic meltdown.
My father was a football sideline reporter for a radio broadcast team for quite a while. The booth team never threw it down to him unless he had something useful to add … Besides the occasional live broadcast bit, he was constantly relaying front-line information to the booth team & their producer, the things they couldn’t see & hear from way up there. That role is probably less important for a national TV team, which has a much larger crew–I think that radio broadcast team was generally a total team of five. (Play-by-play, color, sideline, producer, and engineer.)
The Lions, before he became involved, was a borderline playoff team. **gonzomax **and I were at the last game before the Reign of Darkness. Paul Edinger made a field goal right in front of us to start the new era.
This season Pam Oliver was interviewing Jay Cutler on the sidelines and after throwing him a couple “what do the Bears need to do?” type softballs, she made some kind of asinine comment about how white his teeth were.
This was just a week or two removed from the whole blowout with Inez Sainz and the Jets. During this time, some players came out and said that many women get into the locker room because all they want to see are football players’ ding dongs while radio stations across the country were debating whether or not a female reporter should be in a locker room.
This would have been a perfect opportunity for Pam Oliver to show the world (or whatever portion of it), that there are good female sports reporters who are professional, don’t ask dumbass questions, and can look good doing it. Instead she says he has nice teeth.
For female broadcasters besides Sherry Ross of the New Jersey Devils, there is also Suzyn Waldman for the New York Yankees, although unlike Ross, she is a lightning rod for criticism.
I guess most of them are fairly useless since coaches and players are usually well schooled in saying trite things. But sometimes there are worthwhile. There was an IRL race several years ago when Red Bull Cheever driver Tomas Scheckter made an unwise passing attempt early in the race, crashing into his boss and fellow driver Eddie Cheever. When the pit lane reporter got to Cheever several minutes later, the always volatile man had a few choice words to say about how dumg Scheckter was, that an oval race was not like Formula 1 where you get few chances to pass. Great tv moment. Several years later was at Watkins Glen, when Cheever had taken out Marco Andretti in a crash (Eddie has gotten all three generations of Andrettis in Mario, Michael and Marco) both Marco and father Michael fumed at the cameras about how despicable he was. Later on an interview, Cheever was apologetic about Marco but when asked about an earlier collision with Danica Patrick, he defiantly said “she did it to herself”.
Race car drivers can sometimes give good quotes because the adrenalin of driving 200 mph reduces inhibitions.
I doubt if sideline reporters will disappear as networks always feel they have to have more equipment and people covering events. They also feel that females add some “eye candy” for mostly male viewers and may help keep the quota counting civil rights people away.
Besides Matt Millen, other inept GMs who have landed broadcasting jobs are Mike Milbury (New York Islanders) and until recently Steve Phillips.
Without the female sideline reporter, we wouldn’t have had the high comedy of a very drunk Joe Namath hitting on Suzy Kolber. All of the youtube versions of this were crap. Dig around for your best version.
