I’d be willing to bet $100 that Chris Berman uttered the words, “Bret Favre” sometime in the last 10 minutes. It’s all the man talks about, outside of quoting 30 year old songs like they have any relevance to anything comes out of his bloated, oxygen-deprived head in the first place.
This is a common argument at ESPN company picnics:
Tony Kornheiser: “Favre.”
Joe Morgan: “Bonds.”
Tony Kornheiser: “Favre!”
Joe Morgan: “Bonds!”
Tony Kornheiser: “FAVRE!”
Joe Morgan: “BONDS!”
My ultimate football nightmare is that Miami’s Robert Marve goes pro in a year or two and shortens his name to Bert. At least that’s my non-Mays football nightmare.
Rarely have I ever agreed with a pit thread as much as this one. ESPN used to be my channel of choice, oh, 10 or so years ago. Now, you couldn’t pay me to watch Sportcenter. Really, other than the occasional game that I want to see that happens to be on ESPN, I don’t watch any of their programming. Just awful.
And don’t even get me started on the pathetic state of game commentary across the television world. It’s beyond words.
I avoid watching sports on ESPN when I can help it, an effort greatly aided by the fact that I hate basketball in all of its incarnations. That said, I do have one thing to add to this rant.
Whoever it was at ESPN that came up with this “Vah Tech” bullshit needs to DIE. Die in a fire, die in a bus wreck, jump off a cliff, get hit with an M1 submarine-launched ballistic missile; I don’t care, just DIE. Every sportscaster on Earth now parrots this insipid cunt-sucking phrase, and it pisses off every Tech fan I know (which, if you’ll check my location, is a metric fuckton of people), in addition to me, who gives not half a shit about college sports in general.
Say it with me: “vurr-JIN-yuh”. If three syllables is just too much for your anchors to process, and from the comments in this thread it appears that it may well be, then there’s always “VT”. Or “the Hokies”. Or “V-A Tech”. Or “Beamer’s boys”. Or anything, really, that spares me from having to hear “Vah Tech” ever again.
“Vah Tech”? Seriously, what the fuck?
I mean, everyone agrees. Nobody likes this stuff. Right? And the more you think of it, the more examples you can come up with of ways that actual, legitimate, interesting sporting events have been made worse by the network doing the broadcasting. That’s my gift to you, everyone. Next time you watch a sports broadcast (and although they don’t seem to be talking about it on the TV, I think there’s one on tonight…) just try to avoid all the crap they force upon you that, if you think about it for just a second, presents itself as really, really fucking offensive and invasive.
Fox has those god damn robots and Tony god damn Siragusa (plus Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, which is another thread entirely…). ESPN has all the aforementioned, plus that really obnoxious “And now SportsCenter” voice, plus Joe Morgan, plus a million things about Monday Night Football, plus poker. CBS fired Billy Packer so I won’t say anything bad about them this time, but I could (I really used to like Raftery, actually, but he’s gotten really cranky or something and he’s as bad as the rest of them now) and on and on and on.
ESPN even hired a series of ombudsmen who wrote really insightful columns about exactly this stuff. So it’s not like they don’t know a lot of fans feel this way. Right?
So how is this profitable, since it obviously must be? Is that like the secret of the universe - if you intrusively give people what they don’t want, you win? Is this all about 14 year olds?
Oh yeah! You know what else? When a game preempts SportsCenter, which means ostensibly it’s like an important sporting event or something, they put in the corner a little “SportsCenter now on ESPN 2” thing, which I can understand if I have to. But they make it flash and dance around and stuff, so that not only is the information there if you want it, it draws you away from the actual event that they’ve necessarily decided is so important.
It’s like they want us to hate them.
FAVRE: ESPN’s Ed Werder reports Brett Favre is dreamy Terrell Owens to discuss Barry Bonds Duke Coach K Duke A Rod controversy America Votes Adam JonesDukeFavre
I don’t undestand it either. I think ESPN has shifted its focus more and more to casual fans, but I don’t believe casual fans go for this stuff either. ESPN exists to hype itself. It doesn’t do much else.
But I despise Vah Tech, and so chuckle evilly to myself whenever I hear someone use the expression.
You’ve got to think someone out there must like this shit or else they wouldn’t produce it. Of course, as I’m fond of pointing out, if the media knew what the public wanted, you’d never have TV shows cancelled or money-losing movies.
I’m inclined to think that the media giants just don’t give a flying fuck about the quality of sports broadcasting because they don’t think it matters and isn’t serious. I am inclined to think back to Bill James, the baseball statsman extraordinaire who was told by every publisher “No sports fan wants to read all this intellectual shit” only to find that millions did. James later noted that David Halberstam’s book Summer of '49 was rife with factual errors to an extent that would never be allowed if he’d written a book about a non-sports subject, and he was convinced it was because Halberstam, his editors and publishers just didn’t think it mattered.
I think there IS a demand for good sports broadcasting. It would be easy to just say most fans are retards, and some are, but I think even casual fans would like to hear intelligent commentary. My wife is a casual baseball and hockey fan (basically just because I am) and the first time she heard an intelligent color man - I think it was Al Leiter - she was like “Holy shit, who’s THAT? Why don’t I hear this stuff all the time?”
So to be honest, I am not convinced the ESPN Idiot approach is actually the most profitable possible approach. The fact that ESPN makes money does not mean they couldn’t make more, and one also has to consider the fact that the cost of entry into sports broadcasting is immense. Certain networks have short term monopolies over the broadcast of sports through broadcasting deals. If you wanted to set up the Smart People Sports Network, you’d need a bazillion dollars just to get started and would be further crowding an already crowded market.
:crosses fingers that MLB Network doesn’t suck:
:crosses toes that part-owner Comcast gets off its ass and starts broadcasting it in HD:
I’m from Radford. Usually I would agree about something like this, but I sort of like it. I don’t know why. I’m sorry. 
Can we add the NFL pregame booths? Unwatchable. Too many people talking all at once. No insight whatsoever. Awkward, canned laughter that forces me to change the channel. Why are they laughing? No one said anything funny. Make it stop.
And after hearing his announcing during the Eagles game, I’m now certain Joe Buck is a robot. After a 40 yard TD to seal an otherwise close playoff game: “Westbrook…one man to beat…touchdown.” You would think his terrible call on Tyree’s catch in the Super Bowl last year might have made someone bring up his lack of emotion at some point in the last year.
What a shame that the son of the best broadcaster of all time* sounds like he was trained to talk by an automated Subway speaker.
*warning: may contain Cardinals fan bias
Well, at least Favre’s retiring, so we won’t have to see any more of that sort of pathetic hagiograpic fellatio again.
Oh, by the way, I missed the game last night. How was the telecast?
furt, you swine. I was all ready to tell you just how the telecast was. I could feel the bile rising as I considered my response.
Well played.
But aside from the actual literal Christification that was going on, and aside from the fact that Brennaman, the objective play-by-play man was audibly angry that Oklahoma players had disrespected The Alpha and the Tebowmega, and aside from the few awkward moments where the announcers didn’t know what down it was… I guess it was still a pretty lousy broadcast.
If you mean the NCAA National Championship Game, fuck-ing a-tro-cious.
They kept going to a 4-way split screen. In one corner, a camera on Kevin Wilson, offensive coordinator for OU, doing what they do in the booth, sitting there with a headset on, not moving. Then in the next screen, they would show the various people on the sidelines, including decoys, sending in the signals. In another corner, they had a close-up of Sam Bradford, who was typically just looking at the sidelines in the shot. Finally, the actual camera angle we’re used to seeing in a football game was in the remaining corner of the screen.
While I understand that it can be worthwhile to demonstrate the progression from the offensive coordinator to the coaches, and that it might be interesting to new fans to know that several of the signal callers on the sidelines are decoys, etc., and while I think Sam Bradford is likely a wonderful human being, WE DON"T NEED TO SEE THIS SHIT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER A-FUCKING-GAIN. WE GET IT. MY FUCKING CATS KNOWS HOW IT WORKS NOW, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
It would also help if the announcers had the first clue about college football, and it might not hurt to have a slight clue about each team, other than what they saw Herbstreit say on ESPN’s pre-game show. It also probably wouldn’t hurt to stop throwing out those useless statistics such as “In recent years, Florida wins 89.986858254% of their games when they block a punt.” Well, no shit Sherlock. In recent years, Florida has probably won about 89.986858254% of their games period, whether they block a punt or not. I’m pretty sure that Florida wins about 89.986858254% of their games when they have more passing plays than running plays, and probably win 89.986858254% when they have more running plays than passing plays. Next you’ll tell us that Bob Stoops has only lost two home games in his entire career on days which end in “Y.”
And don’t even get me fucking started on the camera angle on the announcers in the booth just prior to kickoff. They had a monitor behind them with the same shot we were getting, and due to its position, it looked like the announcer talking had a tiny version of his head next to him in the bottom corner, with a ghastly looking blue hue to it, lip-synching with himself. Until they backed out a little, I couldn’t tell what the fuck they were doing, other than trying to creep out the entire viewing audience.
At least poor Ashlee Simpson didn’t sing (okay, mouth words sort of at the same time as her song that was playing) at half-time in this game (and get booed in the process).
Admission time: While I’m with the OP on ESPN (and now hate Fox Sports even more), I’m partially responsible for keeping them in business. I subscribe to ESPN GamePlan and FullCourt each year, not because I like supporting them, but because I happen to live in a part of the country that has almost no teams on local programming that I have the slightest interest in watching.
Since I have to watch sports(I do, I have to watch it), I would like the broadcasting to be good,but it ain’t. Sports channels don’t care how good the announcing is because no matter how bad it gets, sports fans will watch because we need our sports fix.
They also when 89.986858254% of their games when Macy’s has a white sale. But only 89.98734301% of their games when there is a cookware sale.
I agree. I’d say I’m more than a casual fan, but I can’t keep up with many of the stathead baseball fans on this site, for example. So in my opinion I’m the kind of fan who can really benefit from insightful announcers who can break down plays and discuss strategy. And there isn’t very much of that out there. They focus on the star players instead, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, and I don’t need that shit.
Yeah, I know … I watched it. That was kind of the joke. Sorry about that.
Y’know the sad thing about it, though? By all accounts, Tebow really is an outstanding human being. But because over the over-the-top hero-worship, it’s now impossible to talk about it without looking like a douche.
Sort of like you can’t talk about how Favre is such a terrific … oh, wait – Favre is an overrated ego-driven me-first asshole who is now looking for a way to manuever the Jets into releasing him so he can go to Minnesota.
My bad.
I live in CT and know quite a few people, including a couple on-air personalities, who work at ESPN. Believe me, even they shake their head at the idiotic stuff that the network does. If you look at a time line, ESPN turning into a steaming pile of garbage coincides exactly with them being taken over by Disney. My advice is to watch ESPNNews instead of Sportscenter, if you have it. It’s a lot like ESPN used to be - highlights without all the garbage.
On another note, I’m 26, and I can’t ever remember a time when the sports media wasn’t atrocious. Sports reporters are almost all hacks. Their tactics consist of badgering the coaches and athletes until they lash out and then they report it like thats a story (see that douche bag in Detroit), pretending they have all theses insights into the players and the team when in fact they are barely tolerated by said players and team, and repeating each others’ banal opinions over and over again until they are gospel and loudly denouncing any dissenting opinions (see how 98% of journalists manage to have the same “sleeper” pick for the NFL every year), or, and I’m looking at you Peter Gammons and Chris Mortensen, are such blatant homers or are so frequently wrong that whatever they report you can usually count on the opposite happening.
Announcers are no better. There are a couple good ones, but the majority pick out a few “themes” to the game and then try and conform the action of the game to their predetermined story line, even if the game has nothing to do with it. If not that, than often they are just idiots who really should have more than a superficial insight into games they’ve covered for years (Dierdorff, Lundquist, McCarver, MacGuire).