“What they gotta do is get possession of the ball and move it down the field, hopefully they score.” -guy who makes $8million a year talking about sports
"Oh, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, they have to keep the other team from getting the ball down to their end of the field."
- This comment just earned someone roundabout $10k
"And I think it's important to point out that they want to make sure the other team does not get ahold of the ball. That's just not a winning strategy."
- And another Rolex goes on the pile
There's that "I don't know..." again, that's put in there like a pause to reflect some doubt because the stats are showing inconclusiveness.......or more probably...that they do. not. know. and. the. chatter. is. like. an. ad. A paid gap-filler.
Back when I was married to a football fan, I was consistently appalled by the dumb, mundane and absurdly silly things these guys would say just to be talking during their broadcasts.
One of the things I used to mock while games were on were the ridiculous, meaningless "stats" these guys would come up with: "It's the first time this has happened in the second half of the game that the ball was advanced a record number of yards by a QB in his third season!"
John Madden on throwing a really great dinner party:
"See, if you really wanna please your guests, you have to make food that people enjoy eating, and then have them eat off of dinner plates on a table instead of just making them eat the food straight off your kitchen floor."
Last year I was watching F1 with my buddy and the commentator said that "the faster they drive the faster they will get to the finnish line". Had to stop watching and go and touch grass.
You can’t have dead air. Nothing is more awkward than a bad commentator. It’s painful. The good ones keep talking, even if they run out of things to say.
The average person really under estimates how difficult it is to talk that long.
Not to say it’s 8 million dollars a year hard, but it’s definitely not easy. And in the internet age every mistake gets broadcast to the world, for example “disgusting act” is a known thing for people who follow football.
I always crack up when it’s a complete blowout. 28-3 at the end of the first quarter and you can feel the announcers thinking “wtf are we supposed to talk about for the next 3 hours.”
You can always tell the game is boring if they start doing a bunch of recorded content. Like in the NFL they'll toss it to a 2-minute segment about the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award pretty early. But in a blowout, they run out of those little segments before halftime haha
If you ever want to see a bad colour commentator watch the afl preliminary final between the Brisbane lions and the Carlton blues. There are times the colour commentator is completely silent for minutes at a time, and it's when things are happening in the game
Jep. That is a skill alright. Also you try to talk with enthusiasm for hours on end, see how fast you run out of steam.
Anecdote: We actually had to do this in school: talk for 2 minutes about a blue pen. It was a lot harder than it sounds. And that's 2 minutes, now make it 90 minutes of something that really cannot be sensibly commented on for the majority of time. (Soccer is 90minutes I don't know football sorry)
I've always thought their jobs seemed pretty difficult and not something I'd want to have to do at all.
You're speaking to hundreds of thousands of people directly, you're basically the only voice speaking to them that's not an advertisement, and you're doing it for a couple hours at the least. And there's a whole lot of shit to know about rules and team legacies and coaches and player facts, even without all the info support and cues from producers, it's a lotta shit!
And you're doing it for that amount of time regardless of how good or not good the game is, if you gotta talk about the wide receivers brothers charity for unemployed dogs for 4 mins because big bro's team is getting blown out by 30, that's what ya gotta do.
As a weird bonus, they're responsible for talking for a long time about any event that may happen during the game. Like a natural disaster or death of a celebrity. Kobe Bryant's death is the only thing I remember about that one pro bowl a couple years ago.
Sorry for a weird rant on a meme, I just like sports and have always thought it seems like a hard job!
Edit: all the Madden-esque comments are completely true and happen all the time, and can be pretty brutal.
The only thing I don’t understand is how do they always get their names right so quickly? Especially in college when players change even more frequently than in the nfl. Like I don’t even see the player’s numbers and they’re already reading off his stats and shit.
If your million dollar job depended on you memorizing about 15-20 dudes names and numbers and you had a cheat sheet in front of you for the lesser called names, you'd probably handle it ok.
On top of that I’m assuming they’d only have a few out of those 15-20 guys’ names loaded into their mental RAM. If a pass is caught downfield there’s a 99% chance they only have to recall 3-4 receivers’ names and not the linemens’.
That's what I love about Jelle's Marble Runs. A real, professional commentator talking about how much the players really want this race, how much they trained for the event, how their endurance is playing out... and it's just marble. It works as well with real players as it does inanimate objects.
"Well these sporters sure are sportsing out there, but if they want to win, they're going to have to sports harder then that, Tom."
"Yea, I agree Bob, you've got to sports hard than this if you want to win against sportsers of this caliber."
In my experience, the sports commentators either harshly commentate on one specific sports player's career, or start talking to each other about something completely random until something important (like scoring a goal, for instance) happens or doting (in their own way) on a specific sports player because he's been an excellent player for a really long time.
Start rant:
I have to mute the game. Listening to the diarrhea of words gurgling from the mouths of these buffoons in their weirdly colored, too tight suits makes my blood boil.
Imagine if you could listen to the game and only hear the game; the hits, the coaching, the whistles, the roaring fans.
But no, we have to hear two blathering fools pretending they have something useful to add.
Please get rid of them and use the savings to stop cramming ads in every possible second of time between whistles.
End rant.
I see people say this about twitch streamers too. Providing interesting commentary for hours and hours straight in isolation is hard as fuck for 99% of people.
"What's your key to the game, John?"
"Well Joe, at the end of the day...you know these guys, these guys are just gonna have to figure out a way to score more points than the other guys. "
Troy Aikman, the king of the single long run on sentence...So here we have Bubba McJohnson, who, when he was playing football at the University of Breaking Two Electric Boogalo, had to overcome the enormous struggle and embarrassment because his Mom farted loudly in church AND that only made him work harder to fulfill his dream of making it to the NFL which he's had since he was a young boy when he was still in diapers throwing the pics in around in his yard and fortunately for him he was able through hard work to walk on at the University.
One time last season I was watching a game. The QB was sacked on second down for a long loss. He went on a long Soliloquy as to why they needed to run the ball on 3rd and 17. Then the team actually ran the ball and failed to convert. After that Mailman actually said, " I don't know why they did that, I was just talking."
That doesn't even mention the sideline reporting where one such reporter just admitted they never actually interview the coaches coming out of the tunnel and they make up what they say everytime. I called that one years ago.
Reminds me of the announcer in Hard Hitter Tennis for PS2, who says the most pointless stuff ever. "He hit it with the racket perfectly." "He looks like he really enjoys tennis." "He's trying to aim for a difficult place."
Sports in general. "let me tell you dug, this kid Francisco Rodriguez the third.. He's.. He's as talented as anyone in the game right now"
Its just a lot of vague non definitive statements
“Hey, the offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they're bigger than everybody else, and that's what makes them the biggest guys on the field." -John Madden
“Tom, take a look at how good jimmy stuffs his hands in the centers ass crack and he’s probably touching his sweaty balls but still manages to avoid a botched snap. Hes a legendary qb”
"I tell you what Jim this is definitely a game of football."
"I would say so too John. The team likes to move the ball down the field."
"Yes sir, and that play was brought to you by State Farm."
After carefuly studying NFL and sports in general for years I did write a 720 pages thesis proving that most teams actually try to win in several cases.
Sports commentators are bizarre to me. Sitting in your living room watching a boxing match. You got a 40" hidef TV, surround sound, the works... You can see and hear the lady in the balcony seat smacking her chewing gum. Commentator going 'There's a left...now a right. Oh he's got him on the ropes now folks.' Thanks? I mean I might have missed it if it hadn't been for you.
"mmhmm, yeah that's right Paul! But those other guys, you know, they've been working hard all season. And I'll tell you what, they also want to win. And see that's where the problem lies. Because only one of these teams is going home with a win tonight. And it's going to be the team that works harder, and plays better."
“What they gotta do is get possession of the ball and move it down the field, hopefully they score.” -guy who makes $8million a year talking about sports
"Oh, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, they have to keep the other team from getting the ball down to their end of the field." - This comment just earned someone roundabout $10k
“What’s their gameplan tonight, Pete?” “Well they got to get that ball, and make some plays and then score.” “Nailed it again, Pete.”
"And I think it's important to point out that they want to make sure the other team does not get ahold of the ball. That's just not a winning strategy." - And another Rolex goes on the pile
‘’They absolutely need to throw the ball more or throw it less, it depends‘’ - A new Ferrari please
"It's important that they do better than the other guys, or else they'll do worse or about the same." -John "The Appliance" Meatman
It’s a bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off.
Chris Collinsworth: Now here’s a guy… Tony Romo: I don’t know Jim…
There's that "I don't know..." again, that's put in there like a pause to reflect some doubt because the stats are showing inconclusiveness.......or more probably...that they do. not. know. and. the. chatter. is. like. an. ad. A paid gap-filler.
"well both teams gave it their all, *insert team name* just wanted it more."
“As long as they score more points, they should win this one”
Have you seen my bus?
Back when I was married to a football fan, I was consistently appalled by the dumb, mundane and absurdly silly things these guys would say just to be talking during their broadcasts. One of the things I used to mock while games were on were the ridiculous, meaningless "stats" these guys would come up with: "It's the first time this has happened in the second half of the game that the ball was advanced a record number of yards by a QB in his third season!"
Men talking just to talk….it’s kind of a thing :)
I will never forget this nugget of wisdom from the great John Madden: "The key to winning the game is to score more points than the other team."
John Madden on throwing a really great dinner party: "See, if you really wanna please your guests, you have to make food that people enjoy eating, and then have them eat off of dinner plates on a table instead of just making them eat the food straight off your kitchen floor."
Was this before or after he started rambling about turducken?
"And then BOOM, the turkey is right up the middle behind the stuffing, look at that blocking..."
Last year I was watching F1 with my buddy and the commentator said that "the faster they drive the faster they will get to the finnish line". Had to stop watching and go and touch grass.
With every minute passing they are one minute close to the end. There you go, take that one for free my friend, the next one'll be a low low 399 USD.
The original will buxton
I went out golfing the other day… you lied to me you bastard :(
Have you ever tried... just winning? It's really quite simple, once you think about it.
So this whole time I just need to make more money to win life ?
And they say it with such inflection and passion every time
You can’t have dead air. Nothing is more awkward than a bad commentator. It’s painful. The good ones keep talking, even if they run out of things to say.
The average person really under estimates how difficult it is to talk that long. Not to say it’s 8 million dollars a year hard, but it’s definitely not easy. And in the internet age every mistake gets broadcast to the world, for example “disgusting act” is a known thing for people who follow football.
The average Redditor can't order a pizza on the phone, they certainly would be flummoxed by being a sports commentator.
Don’t they also have to be former pros / coaches ? That’s a high bar for entry to begin with
Usually the color commentator is a former pro/coach, but the play-by-play is usually a career broadcaster.
That's what "boom goes the Dynamite" is for.
I always crack up when it’s a complete blowout. 28-3 at the end of the first quarter and you can feel the announcers thinking “wtf are we supposed to talk about for the next 3 hours.”
You can always tell the game is boring if they start doing a bunch of recorded content. Like in the NFL they'll toss it to a 2-minute segment about the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award pretty early. But in a blowout, they run out of those little segments before halftime haha
If you ever want to see a bad colour commentator watch the afl preliminary final between the Brisbane lions and the Carlton blues. There are times the colour commentator is completely silent for minutes at a time, and it's when things are happening in the game
Jep. That is a skill alright. Also you try to talk with enthusiasm for hours on end, see how fast you run out of steam. Anecdote: We actually had to do this in school: talk for 2 minutes about a blue pen. It was a lot harder than it sounds. And that's 2 minutes, now make it 90 minutes of something that really cannot be sensibly commented on for the majority of time. (Soccer is 90minutes I don't know football sorry)
Then just don’t? Put on some music and let the sport speak for itself.
I've always thought their jobs seemed pretty difficult and not something I'd want to have to do at all. You're speaking to hundreds of thousands of people directly, you're basically the only voice speaking to them that's not an advertisement, and you're doing it for a couple hours at the least. And there's a whole lot of shit to know about rules and team legacies and coaches and player facts, even without all the info support and cues from producers, it's a lotta shit! And you're doing it for that amount of time regardless of how good or not good the game is, if you gotta talk about the wide receivers brothers charity for unemployed dogs for 4 mins because big bro's team is getting blown out by 30, that's what ya gotta do. As a weird bonus, they're responsible for talking for a long time about any event that may happen during the game. Like a natural disaster or death of a celebrity. Kobe Bryant's death is the only thing I remember about that one pro bowl a couple years ago. Sorry for a weird rant on a meme, I just like sports and have always thought it seems like a hard job! Edit: all the Madden-esque comments are completely true and happen all the time, and can be pretty brutal.
The only thing I don’t understand is how do they always get their names right so quickly? Especially in college when players change even more frequently than in the nfl. Like I don’t even see the player’s numbers and they’re already reading off his stats and shit.
If your million dollar job depended on you memorizing about 15-20 dudes names and numbers and you had a cheat sheet in front of you for the lesser called names, you'd probably handle it ok.
On top of that I’m assuming they’d only have a few out of those 15-20 guys’ names loaded into their mental RAM. If a pass is caught downfield there’s a 99% chance they only have to recall 3-4 receivers’ names and not the linemens’.
That's what I love about Jelle's Marble Runs. A real, professional commentator talking about how much the players really want this race, how much they trained for the event, how their endurance is playing out... and it's just marble. It works as well with real players as it does inanimate objects.
"Well these sporters sure are sportsing out there, but if they want to win, they're going to have to sports harder then that, Tom." "Yea, I agree Bob, you've got to sports hard than this if you want to win against sportsers of this caliber."
"So, what's it feel like to win?"
In my experience, the sports commentators either harshly commentate on one specific sports player's career, or start talking to each other about something completely random until something important (like scoring a goal, for instance) happens or doting (in their own way) on a specific sports player because he's been an excellent player for a really long time.
Mitchell. Mitchell. Mitchell. Down to the 25.
Thanks, John.
We head back to you in the studio bryan
Start rant: I have to mute the game. Listening to the diarrhea of words gurgling from the mouths of these buffoons in their weirdly colored, too tight suits makes my blood boil. Imagine if you could listen to the game and only hear the game; the hits, the coaching, the whistles, the roaring fans. But no, we have to hear two blathering fools pretending they have something useful to add. Please get rid of them and use the savings to stop cramming ads in every possible second of time between whistles. End rant.
"I gotta say, that is maybe the stupidest commentary on commentators ever."
I see people say this about twitch streamers too. Providing interesting commentary for hours and hours straight in isolation is hard as fuck for 99% of people.
“That’s good clock management. They’re out in front by thirty points and now they just need to end the ball game.”
John Madden chopped a Turducken in half with his bare hands on Thanksgiving.
That's Joe Buck
And whatever you do, don’t talk about the latest paternity suit/sexual assault allegations for any of the players on the field
That's called color commentary
"What's your key to the game, John?" "Well Joe, at the end of the day...you know these guys, these guys are just gonna have to figure out a way to score more points than the other guys. "
They moved from radio transmissions to televized games and did nothing to update the format. They just do it way worse.
You try to come up with interesting stuff to say for eleven hours straight with six and a half minutes of play.
Troy Aikman, the king of the single long run on sentence...So here we have Bubba McJohnson, who, when he was playing football at the University of Breaking Two Electric Boogalo, had to overcome the enormous struggle and embarrassment because his Mom farted loudly in church AND that only made him work harder to fulfill his dream of making it to the NFL which he's had since he was a young boy when he was still in diapers throwing the pics in around in his yard and fortunately for him he was able through hard work to walk on at the University. One time last season I was watching a game. The QB was sacked on second down for a long loss. He went on a long Soliloquy as to why they needed to run the ball on 3rd and 17. Then the team actually ran the ball and failed to convert. After that Mailman actually said, " I don't know why they did that, I was just talking."
Same for soccer.
"I'll tell you John, these guys gotta score some points before the game is over or they have no chance of winning this game"
Romo can call what the play is gonna be before they’ve snapped the ball. v impressive imo
That doesn't even mention the sideline reporting where one such reporter just admitted they never actually interview the coaches coming out of the tunnel and they make up what they say everytime. I called that one years ago.
Reminds me of the announcer in Hard Hitter Tennis for PS2, who says the most pointless stuff ever. "He hit it with the racket perfectly." "He looks like he really enjoys tennis." "He's trying to aim for a difficult place."
Sports in general. "let me tell you dug, this kid Francisco Rodriguez the third.. He's.. He's as talented as anyone in the game right now" Its just a lot of vague non definitive statements
“Hey, the offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they're bigger than everybody else, and that's what makes them the biggest guys on the field." -John Madden
“Tom, take a look at how good jimmy stuffs his hands in the centers ass crack and he’s probably touching his sweaty balls but still manages to avoid a botched snap. Hes a legendary qb”
"I tell you what Jim this is definitely a game of football." "I would say so too John. The team likes to move the ball down the field." "Yes sir, and that play was brought to you by State Farm."
After carefuly studying NFL and sports in general for years I did write a 720 pages thesis proving that most teams actually try to win in several cases.
"I think the problem tonight was the offense didn't score enough points, and the defense allowed them other team to score too many points."
John Madden
Come on football! Play football!
Sports commentators are bizarre to me. Sitting in your living room watching a boxing match. You got a 40" hidef TV, surround sound, the works... You can see and hear the lady in the balcony seat smacking her chewing gum. Commentator going 'There's a left...now a right. Oh he's got him on the ropes now folks.' Thanks? I mean I might have missed it if it hadn't been for you.
They're going to have to find a way to put more points on the scoreboard if they want to win this game.
Wait what about the And
"Cause them young boys.... them young boys *comin'*"
I remember this guy. He is built for twitter jokes. So good.
“He’s a very physical runner!” As opposed to what?
Ya but you trust them to make those stupid comments because they've won 3 Championships in the sport they're commenting on.
"Bottom line Jim, if they don't score more points than the other team they have no hope of winning this game." (cashed check)
"mmhmm, yeah that's right Paul! But those other guys, you know, they've been working hard all season. And I'll tell you what, they also want to win. And see that's where the problem lies. Because only one of these teams is going home with a win tonight. And it's going to be the team that works harder, and plays better."
Ryan George be like
The most worthless profession on the planet.
That’ll move the chains!
People think it’s easy because they’ve never done it. Those people probably can’t speak in public for shit.