Commentators Who Say Stupid Things

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve heard various grammatical errors from commentators and sportscasters lately that are really annoying. If you’re paid, in part, to speak the English language, you ought to be able to get it right 99% of the time. Here are two stupid things I’ve heard recently:

The Mets played “aggressive” today. - Oh really? I’ve never heard of the Aggressives. Which division are they in?

Morning talk show hosts (especially on Today, for some reason) who say “We’re back in a minute.” - No. If you were back in a minute, you’d already be here.
Does this kind of thing annoy anyone else?

2

Please refer to:
Anything said on Monday Night Football by Dennis Miller is classified as a Stupid Comment.

3

This isn’t really a grammatical error, but the absolute stupidest thing I ever heard a commentator say was during the Holland-Yugoslavia game in World Cup 98 (either on ABC or ESPN, can’t remember which).

Holland has a free kick. The Yugoslavia players form a wall. During a brief moment of commentator silence, the goalkeeper shouts something to his players which the microphones pick up. The commentator says: “And if you speak Yugoslavi, you know exactly what that wall was told to do.”

Apart from just being a stupid comment in general, WTF is “Yugoslavi”??? They speak Serbian!

4

Anything said by a commentator at any parade on TV. Especially if it’s supposed to be funny.

5

Pro-sportscasters and atheletes seem to be required to use adjectives instead of adverbs, exclusively.

And the verbification of nouns is irritating, too.

6

Kinda off-topic, but about 20 years ago there was a big car wreck/tunnel fire in the Caldecott Tunnel, which runs under the Berkeley Hills. About 20 people died in the fire, including the mother of a guy who left the car partway through the tunnel to go look for a phone. I saw this guy being interviewed the night of the fire, and the interviewer asked him, “Is there anything you would have done differently?”

The guy stared at him for about five seconds, and said, “Well, I don’t think I’d have left my mom in there.”

Cut to commercial.

7

Anything ever said by John Madden. “One thing’s for sure: at the end of this game, one team is gonna win, and one team is gonna lose, and the team that wins will be the team that scores more points.” Thank you, John! I never would have figured that out without your help. :rolleyes:

8

Not grammatical errors but interesting ones nevertheless.

Samples:

Tennis (Frew McMillan): ‘The question marks must float through your mind like bees in a storm’.

American Football (Anonymous): ‘Although he isn’t as good as he was two years ago, now he’s even better’.

Shooting (HRH Prince Philip): ‘The grouse are in absolutely no danger from people who shoot grouse’.

Horse Racing (John Francome): ‘He must have discovered euthanasia - he never seems to get any older’.

Soccer (Anonymous): ‘Winning or losing is not the end result’.

Bowls (Jimmy Davidson & Gordon Dunwoodie): Davidson ‘As a journalist, Gordon, you’ll find it difficult to find the words to describe this game?’. Dunwoodie ‘Yes, Jimmy, it’s much easier to just sit here and talk about it’.

9

It always irks me when a sportscaster says:
“…that punt was partially deflected…”
HUH??!?
It was either blocked or deflected or completely missed.
“blocked” = completely neutralized.
“partially blocked” = deflected.
“partially deflected” = ??? Scraped by a fingernail? A hair?

My father noticed that, when Curt Gowdy used to cover football, he always said: “…they’re getting into punt formation…” Always. Never: “…they’re going to punt…”

10

Well sometimes they fake a punt.

11

Our local news had one of those vapid bimbos doing the evening news, and one day I heard her refer to the fall “foilage” (yes, foil, as in aluminum) three separate times during one newscast. I can’t believe no one clued her in during one of the commercial breaks.

What a maroon.

12

It’s always bugged me when there’s a conversation going on down on the field between the pitcher and the catcher and the announcer (usually the color commentator) says, “Now, Jim, what he’s telling the pitcher…”

Ugh. Unless they’re miked, you don’t know what he’s telling the pitcher! You can make an educated guess, but you can’t say for certain what’s being said.
Just wish they’d rephrase it as “What he’s probably telling him…” or “When I was in this situation, I used to tell the pitcher…”

13

Events

As in “snow event” or “storm event”. It never rains in Jacksonville any more - we have “rain events”. I musta missed that day in meteorology class…

14

I don’t like the idea of an ‘Organised Weather System’.

15

Among the things that drive me nuts in a sportscast:

  1. Whenever a young team shows some promise, you hear things like, “The Minnesota Twins’ future is definitely ahead of them.” Come on! EVERYBODY’S future is ahead of him! That’s what makes it the future!

  2. Analysts constantly confuse cause and effect. Football announcer like to say things like, “The Dallas Cowboys are 28-4 when Emmitt Smith carries the ball 35 times or more. That means it’s crucial that they give the ball to Emmett a lot.”

No, NO, NOOO!!! It doesn’t mean that at all! The Cowboys didn’t win those 28 games because they gave Emmitt the ball 35 times! Rather, they gave Emmitt the ball 35 times because they were winning! When a team has a big lead, it makes sense to hand the ball off a lot, to run time off the clock! If the analysts’ theory were true, the Cowboys should just give up passing, and hand off to Emmitt Smith on every play.

16

You have to be either a Blue Jays or Cubs fan to fully appreciate dumb comments, because Joe Carter has done broadcasts for both teams, and man does he come out with some doozies. The best one was:

"That pitch was down and low."

Gosh, both! At the same time! Who’d a thunk it?

Of course, the best ever was by braodcaster Jerry Coleman, who once announced on the radio:

"That ball is deep to center field! Winfield goes back after it… he hits his head against the wall! It rolls off, it’s rolling towards second base!"

17

There’s no commmentary worse than commentary on wrestling.

18

As I huddled in the stands at the Pepsi 400, hoping that the race would restart soon, one of the announcers declared the precipitation that plagued us to be “a wet rain.”

19

Amen to that, brother!

I personally cannot stand John Madden:

“Look at him! He’s a football player! He’s a football player!!!”

No kidding John. Let’s see, he’s wearing a helmet, pads and a uniform, and is on the 49ers roster. Yep! Your right! That’s a football player all right!

The other one I love, and Madden is not the only one to spit this one out:

“Remember in the playoffs, every team except one loses it’s last game of the season.”

More brilliance! See, what John wants us to remember is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have only one champion . . . if another team was not eliminated!

“It’s a shame either team has to lose this game.”

Then why don’t we just stop the game now, have everyone shake hands, and go home? After all, we weren’t interested in sitting around for three hours to see a winner or a loser, were we?

Slight hijack, announcers I absolutely cannot stand:

Chris Collingsworth- just a big mouth that spouts garbage. 75% of what he says is untrue, the guy is a total ass clown who has zero clue as to what he is talking about. This guy could not predict a race between a snail and a cheetah. He’s kind of hard to look at too.

Brent Musberger- Total shill, not a real play by play man. No matter how bad a team is playing, he will ALWAYS find something positive to say about them, even when they should be getting ripped for playing like dogs.

Jerry Glanville- Every time he opens his yap, and I look at that plastic hair, I think “Used car salesman”.

Tim McCarver- Never shuts the hell up. To make things worse, when Fox Network shows Mets-Phillies games, we are forced to watch the Channel 5 feed, and it’s so biased its annoying. I loved it when Deion dunked him.

Believe it or not, even though he is a bufffoon, I really have grown from utter hate to admiration for Terry Bradshaw. Love or hate his act, he comes right out and tells it like it is and is right more often than wrong. I also like that the guy is so self-effacing.

20

Oh, come on. It doesn’t take a nucuelar scientist to pronounce foilage.