Personally I find the constant jabbering of former players really irritating. It’s why I can’t stand Sky Sports News, because that’s the jabbering without the football! I love to play it, (when I get the chance, which was 4 years ago) and I don’t mind watching, but I am put right off by the commentary (particularly on Sky)
However sometimes it’s ok. John Motson I don’t mind, because he somehow makes it seem more important and I don’t find his voice irritating.
Given the joice I’d turn commentary off entirely.
What’s your opinion/preference? Any sport, any country, any channel.
Sometimes we have to watch English football without the commentary here, or in the case of Saturday’s match (Arsenal beating someone) without the picture as well.
Good points. Personally, I miss the “expert” commentator when he’s not there; thus, I prefer Tyler with Andy Gray and is it Ian Darke with Brian Marwood? Andy Townsend’s also pretty good as summariser. But some of the others are just not up to it - boring and droney, when you’re looking for pithy insights from the pro’s point of view. Robbie Earle is pretty ordinary, Tony Dorigo is worse, and there are one or two others I haven’t yet identified.
My favourite old style solo commentator? Barry Davies.
Quick quiz:
Of whose goal did he comemnt as follows: “A quality goal by a quality player.”
Another great Daviesism: “Interesting…VERY INTERESTING”
To tell you the truth, in most cases, I’d rather watch boxing with the commentary off, unless there is a former boxer doing the commentary and that former boxer is NOT George Foreman. The HBO commentators are biased towards HBO fighters. Same goes for Showtime. If you listen to the commentators, Oscar DeLa Hoya wins every round of every fight, even fights that he clearly lost like the Felix Sturm fight and most of the Bernard Hopkins fight.
Many years ago, when Howard Coselle was doing NFL commentary, one of the networks decided to air a (professional?) football game without any commentary whatever.
Of course Howard and virtually all other announcers vehemently denounced the idea well before the broadcast. "It’ll be boring! Uninformative!! Awful!!!"
And they were right! It got so bad, I turned it off, probably in the middle of the second quarter.
Nevertheless, our announcers - here in the U.S., that is - go to the other extreme with their incessant chatter. It’s inane. Maddening. Even worse, almost all of them, share the same 4th grade vocabulary, and use the same trite expressions. For example, if you removed “struggle” in all its various forms from the announcers’ supply of words, they would sit tongue-tied.
In Australia it is almost a tradition to watch major football games on TV while listening to the commentary of Roy and HG on public radio. They provide coverage that exaggerates the unimportant and glosses over the important. A typical example went like this. Some player drops the ball:
HG : I don’t mean to criticise him but that was a terrible mistake.
Roy : No. No. He deserves your criticism. He has shamed himself. In fact he has shamed his whole family…even his, as yet unborn, kiddy. His neighbours will not be able to show their faces again. His parents will deny him.
All the players are given belittling nicknames which are used throughout the commentary.
The players love all this and routinely vote them as their favourite commentary team.
As a rule, I’d rather have it. Televised baseball would be deadly dull without it, and football is worse (I also watched the announcerless game, and turned it off). I can’t stand John “Boom” Madden or Brent Musberger, and I can barely stomach Marv "Yes, and it counts"Albert, but as long as it’s not one of those turkeys I’m okay.
The big exception is tennis. I really wish they’d get rid of the announcers altogether. John McEnroe can be interesting when he’s not hyping himself, but that’s the only one I’d even consider keeping. At least we don’t have to listen to Butt Collins’s inane ramblings anymore, but we’re still stuck with Mary Carillo and Tracy Austin. Yuckola.
For hockey, I need announcers. Hearing who has the puck and who passed it, who broke up a play is essential. When you hear the same names over and over again making the plays or breaking up the plays, you can get some feel about who is really contributing offensively and defensively. Plus you learn the players’ names a lot quicker. The CBC announcers are all fine because they assume you’ve seen a hockey game before.
I watched the announcerless football game- I loved it. I wish it had caught on. If I attend a football game, I don’t need announcers so I don’t need them at home either.
Baseball I can follow without announcers- the only information I might want from them is tendencies in the hitter-pitcher matchup and who’s left on the bench.
If the commentators are really into the game I like to have them there.
But it’s when they get bored that you’d really like to turn them off.
Madden and Co. on Monday Night Football are notorious for this. If the game becomes slow during the fourth they just start talking about other teams and other games and other players and your just left watching the game with no play-by-play at all.
Madden “commentator of the obvious” can get boring also with quotes like:
“If you want to win a game you have to put points on the board.”
“If you let the other team score like that, their going to win.”
“The key here is to get the ball into the endzone.”
For me, it depends upon how well I know the sport. I love boxing, and as The Master Killer noted, it appears biased more often than not. The worst for me is during a heavyweight bout, and the favorite is just as intent upon staying in a clench as his opponent. As ineffective and glancing blows are exchanged, if I wasn’t watching the screen, I would think the favorite was raining punches like a street brawler. Football, baseball, tennis, and basketball are sports I often watch with the tv muted. Most other sports, I prefer to have the commentary on.
The sport I mostly watch is baseball, and some of the commentary can be not only entertaining but informative; you can learn about the pitching techniques, the managers’ strategies, why a particular player is good or bad at running the bases. However, certain of the networks are notorious for spending half their time interviewing celebrities and talking about everything except the game at hand. Some stats are really interesting, but is it really important that the last time somebody stole second base during the fifth inning when there was one out and Joe Samolean was pitching on a Tuesday under the full moon was 18 months ago to the day? And what REALLY bugs me is when they select the camera shot of the guys in the booth! Please! I don’t want to see you; I want to see what’s going on down on the field! I very often turn down the t.v. sound and turn on the radio.
I am one who needs a play-by-play commentary so that I can better understand some of the sublteties of the game. But what really annoys me is when they decide to interview some celebrity or former player on the sidelines while the game is in progress. Sometimes they’ll cut to a camera shot of the play on the field, so that you can see the interception being run back for a touchdown while Joe Shmoe is still spouting off about that play he made for Alma Mater back in '85.
Generally speaking, I’d prefer a commentary to nothing. No matter how insipid the talk might be, I think we underestimate how much down time sports actually have. At least the chatter fills those voids.
Small tangent: I once had the opportunity to watch part of an international soccer game with commentary in a language I didn’t speak. Italian? Spanish? Don’t remember. It was on like cable channel seventy-four zillion.
Anyway, it was really entertaining. The game wasn’t hard to follow, I didn’t feel like I needed to know any of the players individually, and hearing the announcers getting totally worked up when the stuff on the field didn’t seem to warrant it was really, really fun.
I need commentary, and I think it’s necessary in baseball, no matter how well you know the game.
However, I need good commentary. I’ll deal with a three-second delay if I get to hear a good radio team over a bad TV team. I could go on about that, but it’s pretty well covered in the “I hate baseball on Fox” Pit thread.
I definitely prefer the commentary. I know the basics of football but cannot pick out a holding penalty to save my life. I appreciate John Madden circling the offender with his little yellow pen so that I know which player to throw my beanie weanie at.
Without commentators I’d be almost completely lost at my Olympic sports. If a figure skater performed a triple salchow in lieu of triple toe loop, I’d have no idea. Do I know what dismount in gymnastics has a higher degree of difficulty? No I do not.
I also like replays. Can’t imagine watching replays without a commentator explaining what they were doing.
However, there are some sports, such as soccer, commentary is not as essential. Yeah, we can see that player x just passed the ball to player y. Don’t need someone to 'splain that to me. Nor do I need to hear, “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLL” to ascertain that a goal was scored. (Though I do wish that someone would explain to me what the deal is with the clock in pro soccer. I believe it’s the only sport where the clock counts up instead of down.)
A bit off subject: May I ask that we pause for a moment in order to honor the genius who devised the neon yellow virtual first down marker for t.v. viewers of American football?
I love listening to the guys on the radio. But, I really miss Phil Rizzuto. I used to love to listen to him.
On the TV there’s just too much useless chatter. You do not need to tell me that “Derek Jeter is up and trying to get a hit in the bottom of the third inning”. Duh. I can see that.
This is the kind of stuff I want to hear. But there is not nearly enough of that kind of commentary on the TV for my taste.
Sure. Why not? That kind of stuff is fun. (It also falls into the “why exactly does he know that?” category. But, fun, just the same)
For hockey and football, I need most of the commentary.
I like the commentary because it puts the whole game in perspective and you find out interesting things about the players you may not have known otherwise.
I watch wrestling with my brother and the commentary is one of the best parts because when the announcer gets excited we get excited too, just the same way the laugh track on a TV show can make people laugh. Boxing is defintely one sport that* needs * commentary otherwise your just watching a street fight.
When baseball commentators are talking about what pitch was just thrown, I have to wonder just how often they’re bullshitting the audience. Can you really tell if a pitch was a hanging slider and not merely a fastball? What lets you know the difference between a fastball and a breaking pitch that didn’t break?
That really irritated me the first time I saw it. Now I don’t want to watch a game without it. I’m a dude who loves the “chick line.”
When I “watch” (the distinction will become clear) sports on TV, I do need commentary. If I’m sitting and working on something else or cooking or eating or cleaning the apartment while I’m only catching sideways glances at the screen every so often, I’d like to know when something interesting or exciting has happened. You couldn’t always tell that from the crowd reaction–the crowd doesn’t usually cheer a touchdown/home run/goal from the visitors.
Of course, if you want, there’s an easy way to go commentary-free…just hit the “mute” button.
. I’m embarrassed to admit I not only like, I need, that line :o (Good thing I’m a chick then, right?