Yeah, I could never deal with that. And I can’t watch sports with the sound off- without the crowd reactions, there’s no immediacy.
I should probably just stay out of this thread, but…
None of these phrases bother me in the least. It’s all just part of the Idiom of Sport to me; this is how people talk when they talk about sports. Actually, I find it somewhat comforting to hear the same phrases trotted out in a meaningless Week Fifteen game between the Jaguars and the Cardinals AND during the NFC Wildcard game.
Unless the Falcons are playing, in which case every damn sentence out of Al Michaels’s mouth had better be freaking Shakespeare.
My parents watch local college sports on tv with the radio sound- usually. The radio announcers are more fun to listen to becaue they are biased in favor of the local team- and do not try to hide it. My mom likes it best when there is about a one second delay with the tv following the radio so you get plays where the radio announcer announces that the shot is “good” or “no good” before the player on the tv shoots the ball. She doesn’t like it as much if the tv is leading the radio.
My folks and I have to do this with our college football. We’re die-hard Tennessee fans, and I grew up listening to John Ward calling the games (very sad when he retired). TV announcers never seem to be able to call a decent game involving UT, especially when it’s a big game. Bowl games, conference rivalries, SEC Championship, it doesn’t matter. Unless we’re playing some pattycake team the commentary always seems to be pulling for the other team. If we’re winning, it’s only a matter of time before team comes back. If we’re losing, it’s just as everyone suspected. The radio crew is definitely biased towards Tennessee, but at least they’re respectful of our opponent’s players and their accomplishments.
I’ll give props to the crew who called the Tennessee-Texas A&M game last year. They didn’t piss me off nearly as much other crews.
If you really want to get pissed off, listen to a UT game on the radio on the other team’s radio station. The announcers get just as excited at the UT announcers but at all the wrong times. 
I’ve been noticing lately that commentators and athletes alike are quick to say “We’ll see what happens”, in any possible context, as filler. And the more I hear it the more it irks me. “John, your team is going to face an uphill struggle to win tonight”. “Yes, but we’ll see what happens”. We will? Really? No shit? How insightful! I’m a big Formula 1 fan, and at least one driver will say this during every single race weekend.
On the one hand, a lot of these announcers’ cliches are, indeed, time fillers. If you’re calling a baseball game, you have to talk for basically two straight hours, only half an hour of which will be describing actual game action. The rest of the time, the batter is kicking the dirt, the pitcher’s playing with the rosin bag, the trainer’s out checking on the shortstop who turned his ankle, the runner at first is taking off his pads and handing them to the coach, and all the rest of it. The announcers have to talk about something to fill all that time.
On the other hand, it is really freakin’ annoying to hear the same stupid things over and over. 
Not just football, but baseball, basketball, hockey, even darts I hear. 
But yes, one of my local baseball guys is fond of saying something to the effect of: “Keys to the game for the pitcher tonight, keep the ball down, keep it away from the hitters, keep men off base, and definitely keep them from scoring.” But he’s a professional, so he’s qualified to say these things. Just like his counterpart, who then answers, “And the team has to score, and score early, and keep the momentum going.” Uh huh. Those are the keys to winning this game, just like they’re the keys to winning every other freakin’ game, except when they don’t happen like that, and the game is won or lost by some other means.
But like I said. Just talkin’ to fill up time.
We in Seattle must be lucky. The Mariners baseball crew is basically four announcers who split the game; two guys do TV and the other two do radio for the first four and a half innings, then they switch off in the middle of the fifth. So you could listen to the radio instead if you wanted to, but you’d be getting the same guys, just with traded halves. At least we’ve got a pretty good crew, not counting the ex-ballplayer who repeats the advice quoted above at the beginning of every single game.
P.S. There is no I in Team, but there is Meat.
He gave 110%.
“No one thought we belonged”
“We’re here to prove the naysayers and doubters wrong”
“(After a close game) it served as a wake-up call”
“They won because they wanted it more”
And my least favorite, because every fan says it:
“(My team) does not get enough respect.”
Admit it, if I asked you if your team gets “enough respect”, you’d answer in the negative.
It’s especially annoying after they win a championship. I’ve even heard Patriot fans say this, despite winning 3/4 Super Bowls! Or USC fans despite being nearly unanimous favorites to win it all this year.
The Patriots don’t get the respect they deserve. Check out the Steelers thread from last year for verification of this. After the Pats smoked the Colts, which was supposed to be a very close game, I mentioned that the Steelers would get killed the following week. Every Steeler fan scoffed, and in between derisive rants kept pointing to the regular season meeting. Surprise surprise, the Pats killed em. (Their secondary is on IR, they got beat in the regular season, they just can’t overcome the Steelers D, blah blah blah.)
And as a Giants fan, no, my team never gets proper respect.
“That’s gotta hurt!”
The one that has been annoying me lately is when they are speaking well of a player by saying:
“He’s as good as anybody else in the league…”
Huh? Well, I expect him to be good, but c’mon if he’s only as good as anybody else in the league why should I care? Tell me about him when he’s BETTER than anybody in the league.
Wishy washy announcers use this cliche to make it SOUND like they are complimenting somebody but don’t want to come out and actually give an opinion.
Another that makes me :rolleyes: :
“We’re just taking it one game at a time”
Really???
There are major conferences (ACC, SEC, Big XII, etc.), mid-major conferences (Missouri Valley, WAC, etc.) and minor conferences (Patriot League, OVC, etc.).
The San Francisco Giants?
This one is basically a staple of any preview article:
“(The home field/court of our next opponent) is a tough place to play.”
As near as I can figure, EVERY PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE is “a tough place to play.” I wish that sportswriters would just assume that we know that Athlete X thinks this – or has the sense to say it so as to avoid providing the other team with bulletin-board material – and not bother including it in the story.
I don’t know about the other sports, but the home-field advantage in the NFL is not a level playing field.
Arizona plays, in effect, 16 road games just based on their miserable home fan attendance.
Other than a few multi-year failures, (Miami, Cleveland, San Fran, et al) most teams at least have some hometeam fans in attendance.
How much must it suck to be a Cardinals fan? Have they broadcast any games yet this century? (No, they’ve all been blacked out because their games never sell out.) One story I read was brutal; it said that the Arizona fans had one football game broadcast, but it was an uprooted Dolphins game (or some other Florida team) during a particularly nasty hurricane. (Or maybe it was San Diego during the fires. I forget.) That’s fucking pathetic.
Thanks for proving my point!
C’mon sports fans, tell us your team doesn’t get enough respect!!
My team doesn’t get respect, but you know, I can’t quite say they deserve a lot of it, the way they’ve played for the past, oh, let me do the math, 34 years. 
It’d be pretty sweet if they won a Cup in my lifetime, but I’m not holding my breath.
GOOOOOO Bruins!
Major League Baseball/National League. Pitcher comes up to bat and hits at least a single. Especially if that drives in a run, the announcer will invariably say “…and he helps his own cause…”
Oh, really. Like other guys on the team driving in runs aren’t helping the “cause”.
But . . . but . . . Then they aren’t mid-major conferences, they’re mid-levels. Or low majors. To call them mid-majors implies that they’re in the middle of the major conferences, and that some other majors are lesser. But I know of none that are.