WOW!!!!! Just got to watch the game on ESPN replay on their premium service and that was the most HORRIBLE announcing I think I've ever heard...I had a couple of friends laughing about it this morning so I was warned...But OMG, who in the h*** was that Cruz guy??? Fakest voice EVER and absolutely clueless throughout the whole game..And Kamera wasn't much better than she was last year (not sayin' much there) My wife mercifully cut the volume midway through the 4th quarter..The Lady Vols deserve MUCH MUCH better than that amateur hour garbage they were spewing.....
For non-national games, ESPN just uses the local broadcast team. For what is worth, I thought they were okay. Kamera Harris has gotten a lot better from her beginning days (but yeah, she still has some work to do). At leas, they stayed mostly focused in the game, rather than getting getting lost in tangential discussions and personal stories (which happens a lot with ESPN's national broadcast teams).
It would sound snarky for me to dismiss Cruz and Harris as "paving the way for AI to call games"... but it's sadly true.
I haven't heard more than 2 minutes worth total, over the past 3 telecasts, from the color announcers that wasn't self-evident, or colloquial inanities. No basketball insights, no pregame research revelations, no "this is how it feels as a player," just blather like "it's always good when the outside shots are falling."
Since filling up empty audio space is evidently job one (and a difficult one, in fairness), could I suggest
useful talk--like naming which players are coming in on substitutions? That information used to be standard play-by-play. It's useful for fans to know, it's definitely part of the game story, and it's part of the season's developing story. It's simple to do, and 90% of the time more relevant than whatever is being said. Instead, it's like the facts and stats of the game are intrusions rather than elucidations.
That's why radio coverage of any sport is better than TV--they understand their job is to
inform you, and
allow the game to entertain you. What possible evidence is there that anyone watches a game whose teams they're not interested in, but will watch for who is calling the game. Unless your name is Manning or Barkley... nuh-uh.
And if I wanted the "watching in a barroom" experience while watching a game, I would just turn on some music, open a beer, and start playing 3 different podcasts that have nothing to do with basketball.
And call my mother.
[rant/off]
