Saturday, watching college football, cause I like college football. I’m watching the OU/Nebraska game and it’s painfully obvious that both announcers are pro-Nebraska. This is NCAA Division 1 football, ABC! Could you not hire people who actually just report the damn game?
Been noticing the same thing all season and all around the NCAA so far. Important (to their confs, anyways) match ups being called by completely obvious homers. Look, TV people, who ever the fuck you really are. If I wanted to watch the games with homers, I have plenty of friends from all over that I could find for many games. I don’t. I want a clear and unfuckingbiased game call, OKAY!?
Shit heads.
Same thing with NFL. Monday Night Football (oddly enough, on ABC) seems to be the only coverage that isn’t homer biased.
Yeah, I know regional coverages will affect who is available when and where, still… it’s annoying to listen to homers.
Dude, that’s the way of the world. Even journalists acknowledge that the local guys can root for the local teams. Personally it’s a bit annoying not to be able to hear an announcer admire a great play from an opposing team member, but alas. I just wish that the announcers for real news wouldn’t do this.
I don’t watch college football, but i’m with you all the way, NoClueBoy.
No matter what the sport, the announcers should leave the cheerleading to the cheerleaders, the cheering to the fans, and just call the fucking game in a professional manner.
Announcers who continually shower love on great or once-great players is one thing. Openly rooting for one team is more annoying. Personally, I’m happy that I once again live 800 miles away from Hawk Harrelson.
I actually like local homers who nonetheless can appreciate a great play or recognize a bad call even when it involves the other team. The great Harry Kalas and Rich Ashburn spring to mind. They have (had) great affection for the Phillies which naturally showed when they called an exciting play, but they didn’t hesitate to show admiration for a great opposing player or to groan when the umpire called an awful one against the other team.
I agree that for “national” games, where the broadcast team is not local, they better create a great illusion that they’re impartial or it pisses me off as well.
This thread makes me realize just how spoiled I am by even the broadcasters for the Red Wings. They have no problem saying that the other team is playing well and Detroit is looking lazy, when Detroit gets a break on a non call and when the opponents get a questionable penalty called against them. The only way you can tell who they are rooting for is the difference in tone when Detroit scores vs. their opponents, and sometimes even that is hard to tell.
National announcers that can’t do that should be drug out into the street and whomped on for a while.
Actually, I usually just hate the announcers in general. It is not uncommon for me to turn down the sound and only turn it back up if I missed the play or didn’t understand the call.
It seems particularly true in college football, and often they have people calling the game with close ties to one of the teams involved. For example, they had Bob Griese callling the Penn State - Michigan game, and he was rooting his ass off for Michigan. (On the other hand, one of the guys calling the Penn State - Purdue game for ABC yesterday said he used to be the quarterback for Purdue, and he did a good job of keeping bias out of his color commentary, from what I could tell.)
Don’t get me started on Notre Dame and NBC. Fuckers! They’ve even modified their logo to be NDBC. Cocksuckers.
What about radio announcers? They’re almost always biased… they’ve been covering the same team for thirty years, more, some of them. They’re fair, but biased. At least, the best are.
That’s why I like my XM Radio. You can sometimes get both feeds for a game, so you can switch from Red Sox to Yankees broadcasters with the push of a button. Makes for some interesting contrasts.
Isn’t that only the case of the local coverage? I think that the OP is talking about national broadcasts that are biased. Obviously a team’s own radio coverage is geared to local fans and is expected to be, and really should be, biased.
Yeah. You gotta expect that. The local radio guys are often homers just because of logistics. They’re broadcasting to and for the home market. However, even these local homers can call better games than some of the national TV guys I’ve heard. Back in the '70s, the radio broadcasts of the Houston Aeros (WHL) were soem of the best hockey announcers I’ve ever heard. Yes, they were homers with loads of inside info, but they called a great game. Any market would’ve found it accepatable.
So, tell me about satellite radio feeds of games? Are they very biased local guys? Local guys but still good game callers? Very good without hint of bias? Or some pre-journalism flunkies?
The regular season baseball feeds on XM are the home announcers. So you get whoever normally calls the game for the home team. This is basically due to the limited amount of channels they can really carry even in that compressed format–they make room for like 16 feeds. They could probably carry all of them if they cut down on some of their music or other talk channels or put even more compression on the feed, though I don’t know what would happen to the sound quality. During the postseason, you generally get both the home and away team feeds as well as the national ESPN Radio feed. So, for example, for the World Series I had my choice between the Chicago feed, the Houston feed, or the ESPN Radio feed. I normally stuck with the ESPN feed, but that was just me. There’s also a game available in Spanish. I’m not sure how they pick which game to broadcast in Spanish during the regular season.
Saturday I was watching the Georgia v Florida game, and after awhile it seemed that the announcers were rooting for Georgia. Every big Georgia play was announced with almost a yell, while for Florida, not so much. But I really don’t think either came in with a bias towards Georga – it was more that Georgia was down and it would be more interesting, from a neutral standpoint, if they made a comeback.
Amen and hallelujah. I don’t want to watch the NotreDame Buttkissing Channel, thank you so very much! They all but called anyone who was rooting for USC a few weeks back a terrorist. Bitches can bite me.
