Broadcast News
A guide for your ears ... and your mute button
By Matthew Zemek
You’re a college football fan. You have multiple games firing away on Saturday. And while you might be the kind to talk with friends all the time, there will surely be moments—in the midst of GamePlan surfing or intense concentration on a tight game careening toward its climax—where you’ll want to have a broadcast team that does its job well.
As College Football 2005 approaches, you know you can’t deny it: you want good broadcast teams to listen to this Autumn. Football games are profoundly more entertaining when a good play-by-play man and analyst inform and entertain. We need good commentators for football games—just ask the programming directors at NBC Sports, who once decided to air a 1980 Jets-Dolphins game with no announcers, just pictures and sound. The experiment has not been tried since, a testament to the fan’s need for observant, witty, knowledgeable and passionate on-air commentators.
So as you prepare to map out your TV viewing habits each Saturday—and perhaps consider whether to bother watching Thursday Night Football or any fledgling ESPNU broadcast—here’s a look at the broadcast teams you want to listen to... and drown out with your mute button.
The news from the college football province of TV Land is pretty good for the diehard viewer this season. Realizing that the premier games fall on the major broadcast networks plus ESPN and the Deuce, the offerings of announce teams on these core football outlets are better than ever. It’s on ESPNU where you’ll want to keep the mute button busy. In the larger analysis, that’s perfectly fine—big games demand big-time announcers, and as long as the season’s marquee games aren’t messed with, a college football fan should be happy.
Let’s go to the tube, then, shall we?
The best news from the broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, and the Notre (Dame) Broadcasting Company—is that there’s no news. Keith Jackson and Dan Fouts continue to do the West Coast, while two other veteran combos, Brent Musburger-Gary Danielson and Brad Nessler-Bob Griese, cover the rest of the country. Brent and Gary will focus mostly on the Big Ten, Nessler and Griese the Big XII. And all the sideline sidekicks are back: Todd Harris with Jackson-Fouts, Jack Arute with Musburger-Danielson, and Lynn Swann with Nessler-Griese. These are all established units with considerable chemistry who are familiar not only with the sport, but with their particular regions of coverage.
Now, if you’re a particularly discriminating fan, you might already have a fairly entrenched preference for one crew over another... or, perhaps more negatively, a distinct desire to mute one crew instead of another. But if you still haven’t made up your mind on this issue, the crew you ought to listen to in that 330 Eastern/1230 Pacific GamePlan time window—when ABC goes to a three- or four-way regional split—should be Brent and Gary.
No play-by-play man alive captures the drama of a big game more than Brent Musburger. Like Keith Jackson in his 1980s heyday, Musburger gets the juices flowing for the Main Event. While it’s also true that Brent soft-pedals things when assigned to a mediocre game, he nevertheless steps it up for the marquee contests, and it’s not that hard to appreciate that as you listen to Musburger during a five-star game. If you’ve watched football for any length of time, you can tell who is on top of the action and who’s going through the motions. Brent Musburger “gets it� in big games. He has that magic quality called “presence,� and it’s unmistakable.
But if Brent leaves you uncertain, the closer on this crew is Gary Danielson. No other college football analyst comes appreciably close to the former Purdue quarterback in terms of providing lightning-quick, razor-sharp X-and-O commentary, spiced with some wit and good humor. With John Madden slipping into a somewhat familiar shtick after 24 years in the NFL booth, it’s Danielson who is the best football analyst on Planet Earth at the moment. Danielson has Madden’s level of knowledge, but he conveys that knowledge smoothly and crisply, at a much faster rate than Madden does. The pacing of Danielson’s analysis keeps his broadcasts fresh and the viewer attentive.
For CBS, Verne Lundquist and Todd Blackledge come back, and for NBC, Tom Hammond and Pat Haden will do Notre Dame games. These are not only quality crews, but they’re great fits for their assignments. First of all, the analysts are stone-cold pros. Blackledge and Haden are first-rate football minds, and they’re simply in command of their facts. But it’s the play-by-play men who give these crews a unique level of compatibility with their audiences.
Lundquist—longtime radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys before joining CBS as an NFL guy—knows his old-time Southern-fried football, and is the perfect kind of folksy voice for SEC games. Hammond, for his part, has the journalistic integrity and industry credibility that always ensure a fair and objective broadcast for what is, in some ways, NBC’s “home team.� Hammond keeps an Irish broadcast on the level, and it’s good to know that.
If there’s any complaint about Verne Lundquist, it’s that he’s biased toward Tennessee. This complaint can be dismissed with a very simple statement: since roughly one out of every three SEC on CBS games is a Tennessee broadcast, it’s natural that Lundquist will develop tremendous familiarity with the Volunteer program. Last year, with longtime SEC on CBS staple Florida in the ditch, CBS programming executives necessarily and wisely put the Vols on their SEC game of the week (and the Vols also reached the SEC title game, giving them yet another game with Verne Lundquist describing the action). This naturally caused the proportion of Tennessee games on CBS to increase, which in turn created the impression that CBS’ play-by-play man was “Volunteer Verne.�
But can we all agree that frequency of broadcast exposure is hardly the same thing as bias? Verne Lundquist is guilty of one thing: he works a lot of Tennessee games. This is not bias toward the Vols. Don’t mute Mr. Lundquist. He’s a pleasure to listen to.
Switching to ESPN and ESPN2, the offseason has witnessed a lot of... well... switching, and the new broadcast combos look promising.
The best broadcast move of the college football offseason was the decision to put Sean McDonough back in prime time, on ESPN2’s featured game of the week. Presumably, this will put him in SEC country, which McDonough covered as CBS’ lead college football voice (before Lundquist) from 1997-’99. McDonough (why did CBS ever let him go?) is an awesomely talented play-by-play man who identifies penalties, clock discrepancies and other on-field happenings with tremendous consistency and timeliness. He’s also unafraid to dress down a player for bad behavior or a ref for a clearly blown call. While many other play-by-play men refrain from identifying a bad spot as a bad spot (or something to that effect), McDonough doesn’t leave the viewer hanging and makes an immediate identification when he sees a play clearly. That trait profoundly enhances any McDonough broadcast. He’s right there with Musburger as a play-by-play voice, and it’s great to have him doing signature games after a multi-year stretch on ABC when he was relegated to doing middle-tier ACC games and Big East games (plus the MAC Championship in December instead of the Big XII or some other high-profile contest). You will want to listen to him this fall.
Paired with McDonough is the man who used to work with Ron Franklin on ESPN’s primetime game. Yes, Mike Gottfried will work with a new partner this year. Paired with McDonough, one hopes that Gottfried—who possesses a very slow and syrupy delivery—will quicken the pace with which he delivers his observations. Gottfried is clearly knowledgeable, but tends to keep his analysis fairly general and theme-driven. With McDonough providing a sharper and edgier play-by-play, Gottfried will hopefully feel more liberated and opinionated. He has more to offer on a broadcast, and McDonough could be the man to draw that knowledge out of Gottfried. This will be the crew I’ll listen to on Saturday evenings this fall. No mute button here.
Ron Franklin—without Gottfried—is joined by Bob Davie, who leaves Mark Jones on the Noon Eastern/9 Pacific Big Ten game. Davie, much like Gottfried, speaks at a slower clip but displays considerable knowledge. He’s a comfy fit for Franklin, a man who can be readily compared with Verne Lundquist: a low-key, comfort-food, grandfatherly broadcaster whose personality shapes the broadcast as much as football awareness (if not more so). Davie is a serious kind of guy, and now that he’s free from the strained attempts at humor from Jones, he might find his niche with Franklin. Davie could now have the chance to come into his own as an elite college football analyst—respected veteran voices like Franklin (not to mention the prime time viewing window) can do that.
And as for ESPN’s Noon Big Ten game, Mark Jones is rejoined by Chris Spielman. This is another good fit. Jones—for all the ribbing he gets (it’s deserved, but admittedly overdone at times)—is a solid broadcaster. His pacing, smoothness and ability to move a broadcast along are all quite good. It’s just his pained attempts to elicit laughs and his excessive uses of esoteric (read: unfamiliar or outdated) vocabulary that make viewers groan. Jones, then, is right where he should be: in a broadcast booth for ESPN, but not in a time slot where the huge games of the season are likely to be played. In a middle-division game in the Big Ten, Jones’ perkiness livens up a broadcast. In primetime, however, his approach would have been a disaster (as it was for last year’s dramatic win by Wisconsin over Purdue). Jones, in the end, can be likened to a fifth starter in baseball: he is a needed part of the rotation during the regular season, but he won’t get the ball in the playoffs.
Spielman, for his part, brings an energy level that will blend well with Jones. Having two young guys together will spice up that Big Ten broadcast, while Bob Davie can graduate to the upper echelon with Franklin. The former Ohio State linebacker could even elbow Jones in the chops if his play-by-play guy uses the word “prestidigitation� on the air.
And then, while still on Saturdays, there’s the new network, ESPNU. Two words: Mike Tomczak. Last year—on ESPN2 with Pam Ward (why did a trail-blazing female broadcaster have to get saddled with such a poor analyst?)—Tomczak was lousy. Slow, tentative and choppy, Tomczak—in terms of both content and delivery—was horrible. Given that he’ll be a central ESPNU game analyst, you can safely use the mute button on Tomczak’s games and any other games ESPNU airs. If that’s the best they got at the “U,� that should tell you something.
Finally, you might wonder—especially if you live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones—if it’s worth watching (or taping) Thursday Night football on ESPN, which would air at 530 in the Rockies or 430 on the Left Coast.
Wonder no more—YES, you want to watch a game if Mike Tirico and Kirk Herbstreit are calling it. This duo has quickly evolved into a superstar crew, right there with Musburger-Danielson and (if the analyst brings a bigger, better A-game this season) McDonough-Gottfried. Tirico doesn’t have the gravitas of a Musburger or McDonough, but that might be a simple (and incorrect) prejudice that comes from seeing his rather bookish look on-air, complete with glasses. But when listening to Tirico doing a game, the identifications have McDonough-like quickness, and the raising of emotions in big moments possesses a Musburger-like flair. The command and presence are total and considerable, in line with that of any top-shelf broadcaster.
Herbstreit, for his part, is a world-class studio analyst who, when teamed only with Tirico (and not the colorful yet distracting presence of Lee Corso in a three-man booth, as had been the case for much of the past few seasons), is freed up to display even more of his feel for not just football, but the totality of the college football experience. If you love college football, you want to hear this crew doing a college football game.
So as the 2005 season nears, the news is good: there aren’t any major broadcast crews where you’ll want to hit the mute button, and yet there are some new crews in primetime that promise even better in-game broadcast coverage. The action is always the thing, but the broadcasting sure helps, and this year, the voices in the booth should be better than ever.
