Wahoo Wire

Courtesy of awfulannouncing.blogspot.com

With the college football season in full swing now, I’d say I’ve logged more hours in front of my TV on Saturdays than I have at work for a week and I must say, I’m loving it.

Except for one thing: the announcers.  I can’t remember them being this bad before; perhaps I just didn’t notice.  I mean even the good ones like Brent Musburger have started to slip a bit.  There have been all sorts of mistakes from getting players’ names and positions wrong, not reading their own graphics correctly, confusing which team is on offense and which is on defense, the list just goes on and on.  I would have thought that these guys (and some girls) being professionals would mean they would be nearly mistake free…apparently I was wrong.

The worst example this season was by far our game against Southern Mississippi.  I wasn’t aware we had a quarterback named “Marc Hall” but apparently he was hurt for that game so our second string QB was “Riko Small.”  I also must have missed the memo about cornerback Ras-I Dowling and safety Corey Mosley swapping jerseys for a defensive series…that was interesting.  I guess I should have expected as much since we were on CSTV, which is like 20 rungs down the CBS Sports ladder, but I’m pretty sure any fans that were watching the game a) picked up on the errors and b) wouldn’t make them themselves.

My solution to this problem?  Three words: Premier League Fanzone.  Watch below.  (For those who don’t know English soccer, Tottenham and Arsenal are hated rivals…like Red Sox/Yankees on steroids).

You can’t tell me you wouldn’t watch a game with two diehards like that doing the commentating.  Imagine us playing against Southern Miss except instead of Bob and Joe from nowhere who don’t care, you have someone like Sebastian (the soccer game nut) for UVA and someone equivalent for USM…wouldn’t that make the game more entertaining?  Honestly, if you’re a fan of the team, you know who the players are.  You don’t need Announcer X to say, “Simpson takes the handoff, cuts through the hole, and is into the endzone for a UVA touchdown.”  You’re watching it happen!  I’d rather hear something like:

- UVa Fan: C’mon Groh…don’t throw it, don’t throw it, don’t throw it…

- USM Fan: He’s throwing…knows he can’t punch it in against that line.

- UVa: …don’t throw – oh there’s the snap!  Handoff!

- USM: Don’t let him in! Tackle!

- UVa: Hold the block! Cut!  YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!  HA HAH!  GOT IT ON THAT LINE!  WOO BABY!

- USM: How’d he get through there?  C’mon guys!

- UVa: Thaat good ol’ song of wahoo wah, we’ll sing it o’er and o’er!

Doesn’t that sound more fun?  Yeah, I thought so.

And imagine what rivalry games would become?  You’d have these fans calling the game living and dying with every play, just like those fans at home watching it with them.  Think about Ohio State vs. Michigan or Texas vs. Oklahoma with one guy from each team in the booth.  I’d pay to see that…I wouldn’t (and don’t) pay for ESPN U to hear ESPN’s F-list announcers mess up.

I would hope that the only thing standing in the way of this happening is that no one has thought of it yet, so anyone reading this with access to television executives, please pitch this.  It can’t be worse than the product out there now and it would really fire up interest at a bunch of schools where it is lagging (cough-here-cough).  Heck, they could even make it a contest to see who got to be the team’s announcer for the year.  That would make the network some money and diehard fans would get a chance to yell and scream like a five year old that got a new bike on television.  Michael Scott would definitely call it a win-win-win, so let’s make this happen, please.  I need some reason to continue watching our team so as not to be labeled a masochist.