I enjoy watching some sports, either live or on TV. What I have no patience for is all of the circus that surrounds it. Sports talk radio, rumours, off-field drama, “sports yelling shows” where hosts argue over sports, whatever. I don’t care. Just tell me when the game or the race is on. It has been years since I’ve watched anything on ESPN that wasn’t a game that accidentally made it onto their broadcast schedule. I’m convinced that in the eyes of ESPN and many other sportscasters, they ARE the content that we all want to see.
If you watch the actual games on TV it’s a little better, but not much. At least you have the game to watch. Over time you will start to notice that most sporstscasters convey very little information. If you took out all of the pointless clichés and superlatives you’d be left with nothing but the noise of the crowd, occasionally interrupted by a few stories that may be interesting, and maybe even a little actual information about the game. I’m probably in the minority but I think that would VASTLY improve the broadcasts.
A good example of that played out today at work. We turned on the TV in the breakroom to watch the USA – Germany match in the World Cup. Not having cable, we watched the game on Univision, so all of the commentary was in Spanish. Someone would come into the room and see the game on, then come over to watch. They would be into the game, following the action and reacting to it for about ten minutes before they would look at the rest of us and ask “Are they speaking Spanish?” This happened several times. Yes there were sportscasters, but the fact that almost nobody in the room knew what they were saying didn’t diminish the enjoyment of the game.
Many people like sports. Practically none of us participate in them at the level seen on TV. Sportscasters get better access to the games and the players than the rest of us do, and too often they act as though that makes them a critical part of the action. I wish every sportscaster could have this experience of seeing people enjoy a game for a good amount of time without even noticing that the sportscasters were not a part of it.