How ‘Bout Them Sports Announcers!
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Sports announcers can be a lot of fun, particularly if your idea of a good time is to sit as still as any MRI technician would say you have to while a complete stranger drives a rusty screw through your skull with a manual screwdriver. If, by fun, you mean speaking orations that actually mean something, sports announcers are not your best choice.
Perhaps you’ve heard this gem after the star QB threw an interception: “Well Dave, I think that’s one pass he’d like to have back.” First of all, no duh, Socrates. Your comment is about as insightful as saying Mt. Everest is tall. But second, aren’t we being a bit presumptuous?
How do you know the QB wants that pass back? Maybe he has an aversion to pigskin and is trying his best to get off the field. Or maybe getting that one back would mean having to go back out and stick his hands on the center’s butt, which is something he definitely doesn’t care to do unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Trained Expert Sports Persons
I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on them. The announcers who make a living bloviating about sportish things are fully trained and ISO certified expert sports persons. By the way, did you know that ‘ISO’ stands for ‘Important Stuff that should be Obvious’? Yeah. And the very first ISO standard which, ironically, was numbered ISO-1, was that everyone with a brain should know all the obvious stuff.
As legitimate sports experts, TV announcers know exactly how to lull viewers to sleep only to jar them awake by screaming something like ‘g-o-a-a-a-l-l’ at the tops of their lungs. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a TV sports-induced dream of pizza and wings shattered by an announcer on the verge of an oratory coronary because one of the teams just scored.
Unfortunately, screaming about a goal, touchdown, homerun, or other exciting means of scoring is about as intelligent as most announcers can get. It’s only downhill from there, like when the dynamic announcing duo has to remind you that a one-point game is a close contest. Or when one of them waxes eloquently about how a particular athlete is a real warrior, having overcome the disadvantages of growing up poor, on a striped newt farm no less, to become an all-star player.
Practice Makes Perfect
Sometimes I wonder where ‘Dave’ and ‘Mike’ come up with their stuff. I mean, I’ve heard things that make Capt. Obvious seem like the most interesting guy in the room. I’ve heard sports analyses that, when compared to popular music, make ‘Baby Shark’ seem like lyrical genius. I suppose it’s all the practice they get. It must make perfect, right?
Perhaps the networks could begin insisting that sports announcers earn master’s degrees in engineering, or even animal husbandry, before going on the air. At least then they would have to prove the ability to string multiple sentences with real meaning together to form logical thoughts. But then watching sports on TV wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.
I guess I have to apologize for my ramblings after realizing how much of the entertainment factor in pro sports lies with the announcers. I really would like to have this one back please.
