Brent Musberger is the single worst announcer in sports.
“That’s a bold assertion,” you say. “I find that hard to believe. I mean, he’s famous.”
Allow me to explain: Musberger generally calls games for ABC as part of a two-man announcing team. Musberger is the “play-by-play” guy, and the other member of the team, the “color commentator” is usually a former player or coach. Yesterday, for example, the color guy was former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, the Haircut Who Walks Like a Man.
The job of the ex-jock “color commentator” is to be, well, colorful. They’re supposed to provide some sort of insight from the perspective of a coach or player, illuminating some of the subtleties of the game for the people watching at home. They’re allowed to be opinionated, and on local stations are often ridiculous homers who openly root for the team whose games they call.
The “play-by-play” guy is really a holdover from radio, and his job is to convey information to the audience at home. He’s supposed to let us know who has the ball (as it’s often difficult to tell in wide shots), who got called for a violation, what the violation was, and remind us of the score and any other relevant statistics. He also provides prompts for the color guy.
A sports broadcast can recover from an idiot color commentator, provided the play-by-play guy is good. The color commentary is just for color, after all, and if the color guy is addled, distracted, biased, or just plain dumb, well, he’s annoying, but at least you can still tell what’s going on.
There is no hope of recovery for a broadcast with a bad play-by-play announcer, though, which is why I say that Brent Musberger is the worst announcer in all of sports.
Take yesterday’s Maryland-UNC game, for example. After all, it’s what prompted this rant.
On at least five occasions, play stopped because of a whistle, and they went to commercial without telling us what had been called. This is the most basic and fundamental job of a play-by-play announcer: to let us know what’s going on on the court. Musberger couldn’t be bothered– they just went into the commercial break, without any explanation of why play had stopped to allow the break. Was it a foul? Who was the foul on? Who knows?
On several occasions, Musberger got plays flatly wrong. In the most egregious example, he attributed a Maryland basket to by Landon Milbourne to Marcus Ginyard, who plays for the other team. He didn’t even appear to notice, and certainly never corrected it. On one play, he was confused about who was supposed to get the ball, and spent an entire thirty-second timeout talking about strategy for Maryland inbounding the ball, while an on-screen graphic informed the viewers that it was UNC ball.
When he’s calling a game, your best hope of understanding what’s actually going on is to turn the volume up really loud, and try to hear the arena PA announcements in the background.
What did he do instead of, you know, his job? He babbled about other teams in other conferences, bantered idiotically with Lavin about some trivia question about famous guys named “Williams,” and generally chattered like a bimbo on a morning talk show. His producers were doing their jobs, as informative and useful graphics appeared on screen at regular intervals, but he only rarely deigned to notice them, and usually kept on talking about whatever unrelated subject he was off on before they so rudely tried to inform the audience.
He’s particularly toxic when paired with Dick Vitale, whose continuing recovery from vocal cord surgery was the saving grace for this game. Musberger-Vitale is edged out for Worst Announcing Team in Sports by Mike Patrick and Vitale, purely on volume grounds, but Musberger beats Patrick for Worst Announcer because Patrick retains just enough residual professionalism to occasionally correct his mistakes.
There are good play-by-play guys out there, even on major tv networks. Mike Tirico is terrific, Joe Buck does a good job, several of ESPN’s second-string announcers are solid. Musberger is a complete travesty.
Joe Buck I find truly annoying for football. Baseball he is ok. During the football games he seems to put his opinion out there a lot (or at least used to) and banter about things besides the game at hand (not to mention kiss Troy Aikman’s rear way too often). Maybe he has improved but I did not watch games he did this past year.
Keith Jackson now there is a man who can call a football game.
Al Michael’s is pretty good when he isn’t getting network interference to promote X,Y, and Z/banter about the trivial, etc. I think this is where the problem lies. Play by play isn’t what they are being asked to do anymore. They are now more PR announcers for the rest of the lineup on the network than they have in the past and somehow the marketing brains decided to do this Play-by-play announcers need to banter and be entertaining themselves.
I couldn’t agree with you more. As a MD alum, nothing could have ruined the game more than that last minute 3 point shot going in, but something did.
It was Musberger. The overanalytical, over talkative Billy Packer, another I cannot stand, would been a marked improvement.
NBA games are called so much better.
Joe Morgan is the worst in baseball. I know he’s a color commentator, but he can’t help but endlessly repeating variations of the most mind-numbingly obvious things, such as, “To win the game, you have to score more runs” or “you can’t give up that many runs and expect to win.” It makes you want to tear your hair out.
Michael Kay.
Come on guys! Bryant Gumbel on Thursday Night Football is the worst. He defines everything that is wrong with play-by-play announcing, either not watching the game or watching another game, I am not sure what exactly he is doing. Billy Packer is just a Dick Vitale wannabe. Joe Morgan is to baseball as John Madden is to football. Al Micheal’s simply gets confused between the game and real life. But Gumbel, I do not have to the words to describe how awful, horrible, terrible, bowel wrenching sickening he is to listen to on Thursday nights.
As for Musberger and that inbounds thing, if memory serves and if Chad is talking about the last minute of the game it SHOULD have been Maryland’s ball. I think what confused Musberger was the god-awful call by the ref. One of those things you see and hear but your mind will not believe.
could be worse, could be Bryant Gumball……Now Greg is pretty fair!
You know, Musberger is awful, but there’s a certain professional quality to his awfulness that puts him above some of the amateurish babblers you get sometimes. Like, you’re watching, and Musberger is rambling on about something, or sticking to whatever storyline he figured out for the game before it started, and you’re annoyed, but at least you’re annoyed with good ol’ Brent.
Also, you know, I’m not even sure I realized that Musberger was a play-by-play guy?
Mike
I guess it depends on how play-by-play is defined. Back in the good old days the play-by-play guy described the action on the field and the ‘color’ guy supposedly analysed what happened on a particular play. Now each and every play is described, dissected, re-shown, re-shown in slo-mo, re-shown in reverse angle, and each re-show is described, dissected, and anlaysed, with both the play-by-play and ‘color’ guy commenting and giving props to the fun loving guys in the trailer. The concept of play-by-play and ‘color’ guy is now a bit murky as both offer opinions on what just happened, what should have happened, what could have happened, and what needed to happen. To combat this TV makers have given us a wonderful tool called mute. I use it frequently.
“To combat this TV makers have given us a wonderful tool called mute. I use it frequently.”
I do this too, and either listen to the (often better) radio commentary, at least if there’s no delay (or the same delay); or just put on some music.
The problem with the mute button is that games really lose something when they’re completely silent. It’s one thing if you’re in a bar with a crowd of other people, but watching a silent tv at home is just annoying.
I do sometimes mute the tv and listen to the Giants radio network, even with the 15-second delay, but that’s mostly because Fox keeps assigning the crew with Darryl Johnston and Tony Siragusa to Giants games, and I can’t stand them. Johnston never has anything positive to say about the Giants, and Siragusa is a waste of complex organic molecules.
Troy Aikman is an affectless cyborg announcer (which is why Joe Buck needs to express more opinions in footbal than baseball), but at least he’s reasonably professional.
Getting back to technology, what I want is not a mute button, but the ability to select specific audio channels. I’d like to be able to get rid of the announcers, but keep the crowd noise and venue PA channels. Some bright electrical engineer needs to get to work on that.