The Voices of Reason: Sports Commentators
by Various Authors

There have been some great sports commentators throughout history: Vin Scully, Chick Hearn, Bob Miller...and that's just Los Angeles.  These men (and those like them) not only describe the game they are watching, but they successfully walk the fine line between adding to the listening experience and becoming the listening experience.  Unfortunately, commentators with that skill are few and far between...

Question:  Who is the worst sports commentator in the business today?

Rick Sliter—Apologies to Joe Morgan, the runner up, who, despite being universally loved by other ball players, contributes very little during the ESPN Sunday Night broadcasts.  Morgan has no sense of statistics, the importance on on-base percentage, or any dramatic flair whatsoever.  He does, however, believe that Pete Rose should be sent to negotiate peace talks with Hezbollah…Morgan sets the curve for on-air hatred of a former teammate (except when Shaq decides to speak).

The winner(?), without question, is Joe Theismann.  Joe turned Sunday Night Football into an almost unwatchable experience.  Joe’s basic philosophy of broadcasting is to identify a player that makes a substantial contribution on a play, then praise said player for being “one of the best in the league” at whatever it is said player just did.  Also, Joe has a section in his contract which requires him to use the phrase, “You know, we had an opportunity to sit down and talk to [player, coach, GM, cheerleader] before tonight’s game, and they told us…” at least 25 times a game.  Did you know that Joe and the other announcers apparently get to meet with players and coaches before the game?  Neither did I.

Joe essentially uses MadLibs to prepare for each game.  For example, “You know, Mike, ______ (insert quarterback) is really one of the best in the league at making that play.  Now, I know his team has been down and struggling this year, but it’s certainly not due to ___________ (quarterback’s) heart.  What heart.  What a professional.  And to see him ________(take a sack, throw the ball away, call timeout) like he just did, wow, we’re certainly watching someone special.” 

I don’t like to be too critical.  After all, as Joe himself once said,  “Nobody in football should be called a genius.  A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

Of course, all bad commentators today aspire to reach the pantheon of bad—Magic Johnson during the 1992 NBA Finals.  I’ll remember the Bulls-Trailblazers Final more for the awkward and ridiculous comments from Magic—and the valiant attempts of Mike Fratello and Marv Albert to somehow transition his comments—than the actual performance of Michael and the Bull’s first two-peat.  “If I was Kevin Duckworth, I’d be demanding me the ball!”

Francis Mitchell—College basketball is my first and greatest love among sports.  Being a little kid in Chapel Hill, it's hard to avoid.  Having revealed where I grew up, I'm sure any of the ESPN watching crowd can already guess who I'm going to tap: Dick Vitale.

Wait a minute, you say, he's as much a UNC homer as he is a Dookie!  This is true.  Way back before he became a card-carrying, crowd-surfing Cameron Crazy, back when Dean Smith was coaching for the Heels, he was as much a fan of his "Michelangelo" and the Heels as he is now of Krzyzewski, maybe even more so.  You see, what bothers me is not (well, not just) that Vitale infuses his commentary with so much enthusiasm for a certain team, it's that he does it at all.  How on earth can such shameless homerism be considered professional as a sports commentator?

Going further, let's assume for a moment that Vitale is capable of un-biased commentary.  His "schtick" was grating, even when I was a kid.  With his "wham-bam-jam," "diaper dandies," "PTPers," and "M&Mers," Vitale trumps all for annoying diarrhea-of-the-mouth syndrome.  Yes, even Madden.

Vance Macdonald—I am afraid that my personal favorite whipping boys are both pretty common residents of this topic: Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan.  Joe is just so old school it hurts.  Nearly everything out of his mouth reminds me of old-timers sitting in Floyd's barbershop reminiscing about how no one today can play like Bob Pettit used to.  I'd rather chew glass than hear him rail against sabermetrics or rave about the Big Red Machine.

While Morgan is at least a likable guy (and will rarely provide a relevant insight), I can think of nothing postive whatsoever to say about McCarver.  He is just a punk and a blowhard.  One of my favorite baseball anecdotes is Carlton Fisk putting Deion Sanders in his place (sort of the godfather of the Varitek-Arod smackdown?).  So perhaps Deion pouring a bucket of water on McCarver shows just how low on the karmic food chain Tim lies.

Craig Macdonald—Chris Berman doing anything but Sportscenter is my least favorite sportscaster.  I don't need cheesy, contrived nicknames and sound effects during golf or baseball.  Do my Sportscenter, but don't do my golf.

Bob Jensen—Is Jeopardy! a sport?  If so, then it would easily be Alex Trebeck (and Martell, I know that you love Jeopardy!, so do I, but in spite of Alex, not because of him).

But more seriously, in actual sports, two names immediately jumped into my head when I heard this question, Rex Hudler and Bill Walton, and think that they both say dumb things.  So then I have to figure out a way to determine which of the two is worse.  Well I am a huge baseball fan, especially of the Angels, and I watch their games as often as I can, so I have to put up with Rex quite a bit. Conversely, I don't care for the NBA that much and therefore don't have to put up with Bill Walton very often.

Here's an analogy: I used to date this really hot chick named Lisa who said dumb things all the time, but was really hot, I mean really hot.  So, at first, the dumb things she said were kind of cute, and, had she just said dumb things just occasionally, they may have remained cute.  But, eventually the pervasiveness of her stupidity overrode her hot factor and I had to move on.

So, I have to account for the "Lisa factor" between Bill and Rex, allowing for the possibility that the amount Rex annoys me is directly related to how often I have to hear him.  Bill Walton annoys me as much as Rex does, and I hear Bill far less often, therefore qualifying Bill Walton as the worst sport commentator in the business today.

Mark May—Whomever is actually the worst sports commentator is probably so bad that he or she does not appear regularly on a show.  Seeing them would just be happenstance.  Several attractive women with nice hair and white teeth and who fill out their shirts nicely spend a few seconds a couple of times each game reporting on meaningless minutia from the sidelines and asking the coaches dull questions as they run off the field or court.  I can't count these "sideline reporters" as candidates for worst commentator.  They are asked to do little (though they often deliver less).

I want it down for the record though that I am not including Bonnie Bernstein in this group.  She is both knowledgeable and effective.  She has just left CBS and I think she ended up at ABC/ESPN.  The press release said that she will will serve as a sideline reporter on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball and ABC’s weekly college football telecasts.  Baseball sideline reporter?

But I digress.  This piece is supposed to be about the worst of the bad ones.  Someone with a high profile.  Someone who either knows nothing or says nothing.  Listening to them is like nails on a chalkboard.  You want to chuck something at the tv when they speak.  As bad as Ann Coulter or Bill O' Reilly but in the world of sports.  I nominate two, both from basketball and ESPN.  First, Stephen A. Smith.  Argument for:

Next nominee - Dick Vitale. Argument for: Ok, it's a tie.  I think that Dick Vitale and Stephen A Smith are both the worst sports commentators.

Martell—My God, so many choices, so little time.  I have to say, I can't disagree with any of the above-mentioned choices.  I do have a soft spot for Dickie V, probably because of that whole blindness in one eye thing, but he can get pretty damn annoying.  He's definitely the most annoying half-blind sportscaster I've ever seen (Stuart Scott just has a lazy eye, not blindness).  I've got a soft spot for Hudler too because of the brain aneurysm he suffered.

The reason Walton doesn't bother me as much as does other people is that he's not stupid.  He's opinionated, sure, and I often don't agree with his opinions, but he rarely comes across as a blathering idiot, and that is the one thing I hate the most in a sportscaster.  Same with Berman—he's not witty but thinks he is, which is the thing I hate the second most in a sportscaster, but he isn't dumb.  So for me, my selection will come from the pantheon of ex-athletes that speak from a position of myopic ignorance of the world around them and terror that someone intelligent will come along and expose their stupidity.

Much like Bob, I chose to select someone from one of my favorite teams, so this choice may be an unknown to all of you, but you'll just have to trust me.  Frankly, I could have chosen just about any San Diego broadcaster—Ted Leitner is often considered the most annoying of the bunch, Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton is nothing more than an SNL sketch any more (thanks to Jim Rome), and even the good-natured Jerry Coleman is becoming so senile that he's nearly unlistenable—but for me, the worst is the newest addition to the Padres broadcast, Tim Flannery.

Tim Flannery is such a complete idiot that he makes Ozzie Guillen look like Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I can't remember the last time he used a three-syllable word, which really isn't that big of a deal in the real world...except HIS JOB IS TO DESCRIBE THINGS FOR A LIVING!!!  Do you think Vin Scully made his name by continuously leaning on adjectives like "good," "far," and "big?"  Doubtful.

On top of that, on more than one occasion I've heard him go out of his way to insult somebody for absolutely no good reason.  This pisses me off to no end, to the point where I often turn off 1090AM for 30 minutes or so if I know he's on there.  Here's a specific example: One day he was talking about something useless, as usual, when he brings up the guys over at Baseball Prospectus and their stat VORP, which stands for Value Over Replacement Player.  I won't bore you with the intricacies of VORP, but let's just say that it is a useful tool for comparing players from different eras and it has large potential in the future for roster management and resource optimization (aka, spending your money on players wisely).

Anyhow, he brings them up out of nowhere and says something to the effect of, "The guys over at Baseball Prospectus and their VORP—what is this VORP anyway?  And what I want to know is, can those guys even play baseball?  I'd like to see one of them throw a ball before he starts talking about the value of a baseball player."  Excuse me, but what does throwing ability have to do with thinking ability?  That's like discounting Einstein's theories because he's never actually travelled at the speed of light or John Nash's analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma because he's never been in prison.  Of course, Flannery probably sees that, if his bosses ever realized that baseball playing experience did not necessarily mean good baseball analysis, he'd be out of a job.

Oh, and one more thing: I don't know the guys at Baseball Prospectus, but I've been a Padres fan for over twenty years, so I've personally watched the majority of Tim Flannery's career.  Based on what I've seen, I'd be willing to bet that at least one of them can throw better than Flannery.

To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.

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