Not surprisingly, the 17 play-by-play announcers ranged from excellent to almost off-the-scale bad.

For the color commentators, I converted letter grades to computer grade-point averages for each, and then ranked them.

Three of the 18 color commentators were excellent. One as as bad as you can get.

Maybe the biggest surprise, the network's scores for play-by-play and color ranked the same as cable outlets. CSTV was the best in both categories; regular viewers won't be surprised about which network was at the bottom of both lists.

I did not score any of the NCAA tournament second-round games, but it was apparent that most broadcasters did a better job in round two than they did in the first round. The same was true of the Sweet 16 games.

One thing that occurred in a second round game, however, derserves mention. The opening of the Florida State-Richmond game was missed by Full Court, despite it being shown on ESPN2. I estimate approximately 5:45 minutes of clock time were missed by paying subscribers and there are no excuses for that. Something similar happened last year -- clearly ESPN is a slow learner and owes their subscribers more than an apology.

The announcers

Here are the play-by-play reporters, in descending order:

The color commentators' grade:

In both tables the asterisk (*) denotes ESPN's men's game personnel.

The networks

Here are the BOR and color scores by network:

Network	BOR
CSTV/ctv	91%
FSN	78%
CSTV	67%
ESPN	53%

 

Network	Color Grade-point
CSTV	3.57
FSN	2.27
CSTV/ctv	2.00
ESPN	1.27

Some observations

Some of the best play-by-play and color commentators are under contract with Fox Sports and CSTV and concentrate on specific conferences -- and ESPN is well behind the power curve. Both Fox Sports and CSTV do better jobs than ESPN. Indeed, some home team broadcasters (e.g., Bob Picozzi) are better than their ESPN equivalents. And oddly, some who did well for Fox Sports had serious drops in scores when working for ESPN.

These finding confirm what most people already know: The networks have idiosyncratic characteristics that override the quality of the announcers they employ. Moreover, the worst of the networks is ESPN. Anyone else can do a better job than ESPN.

Major problems

1. Fluff

Most of the problems I found sprung from the tendency of some networks, especially ESPN, to overwhelm the game action with largely irrelevant "personal interest" fluff. "Personal interest" is in quotes because I know few people who like having the game action interrupted by long (and usually repetitious) discussions of player personal problems or other irrelevancies.

Using a game as a background for personal interviews with former players, former coaches and former pundits, is a nasty practice and should be terminated completely.

Fixing the fluff problems should be simple. They require no addition to the broadcasts, but rather some simple subtractions. (Yes, I know one broadcaster I did not review has trouble subtracting one score from another to get the game margin. That's not the kind of subtraction I mean.) Do not insert extended fluff while the ball is live and never do an interview while the ball is live.

2. Understand the rules

The 2005 NCAA Rule book is 180 pages long (plus index). It can be read in as little as three hours by even the slowest reader. Yet some broadcasters misrepresent the rules repeatedly. Consider:

i. No one can make make judgments about charge/block situations based on a few seconds of tape replay. Everything depends on whether the defending player has established and maintained a legal defense position, a position where she has both feet on the court and is facing her opponent, provided the defender is not under the cylinder or behind the backboard. Once she has established a legal defense position, she may move laterally or backward.

How many times have the broadcasters shown a tape where the defender is in motion and said "it was block -- she was moving her feet?" I've seen that nonsense at least once a week during the season. And it is nonsense. The tape fragment does not show if the the defender had a established a legal defense position. If she moved forward, it would be a block, but moving laterally or backward is legal after the legal defense position has been established. In other words the tape replay almost never shows the complete play and cannot be used to distinguish a block from a charge. This misuse of the tape is the reason why many fans scream about blocks and charges -- they are doing what the TV showed them to do. It's usually wrong.

ii. Over the back is not a foul unless there's illegal contact. When the broadcasters quote a coach as saying, "Of course she's over the back -- she's much taller" they are misrepresenting the foul and giving credibility to nonsense. A taller player's arms over the back of a shorter player is only a foul if those arms make illegal contact with the other player. The coach who made that assertion knows this, but he/she uses the broadcasters as a voice box to suggest that there's something wrong with the officiating without actually saying so. "Over the back" is not a foul -- violating the principle of verticality and making illegal contact are required for it to be a foul. Note: contact with the ball or the hands holding the ball is not illegal.

iii. It is almost impossible to judge whether contact occurred by viewing a TV image. That became vividly obvious during a men's regional final when the officials tried to determine if a foot made contact with three-point line from TV playbacks and took five minutes to decide the issue. During that time the broadcasters attempted to make the same decision with enlarged versions of the tape images. They couldn't.

Yes, officials right on top of the action can make mistakes in judging whether contact occurred. That fact is not a license for TV broadcasters to rerun a play so they can affirm or contradict the official. It usually cannot be done.

iv. "Her arms were vertical -- how can they call that a foul?" It's simple. Contact can be below the shoulder. With the mass of bodies usually surrounding a play like this, it would be a miracle if the coach or the camera could see what was happening below. On the other hand, the officials are constantly moving to get good angles on what's happening.

All this brings us to "unfair fouls." Yes, officials often overlook ticky-tacky fouls of they don't create advantage of disadvantage, but broadcasters often label two types of legitimate calls as "unfair." Unfair to whom? The team that was fouled?

v. Broadcasters who assert that it is unfair to call three seconds in the paint do not understand the rules. It is not optional. In fact, by making timing of many non-calls, I determined that most officials actually stretch the three seconds to five or six, because calling all the three-second violations would stop most games completely. Perhaps that rules should be changed to reflect the reality, but calling the foul is not unfair.

vi. Any broadcaster who says that is is unfair to call a foul at the end of a game (sometimes said "in the final minute" or "in the final seconds") is incompetent. Lateness of a foul does not excuse it.

vii. Use the correct tense. Someone long ago (I won't say who because that would really date me) started using the future tense for fouls and violations (probably to emphasize how the announcer was on-top-of things). It is no longer fashionable. If the officials call something, say "they called" it. Is that really too much to ask. Telling us "they'll call a travel" while the ball is already moving in the hands of the other team is just silly.

viii. TV broadcasters have developed a jargon that approaches the ridiculous. The most misused word is "athleticism." That's a multisyllable word that reduces to power or speed. It's used to make the broadcaster seem educated; in fact it does the opposite.

Broadcasters are also fond of misusing physics. When the lead changes the one thing that hasn't changed is momentum. For one thing, what they're really talking about is inertia, but even that is silly when applied to team sports. Alternating runs are just that, not great changes in physical parameters.

In short, broadcasters should report the game, not pretentious constructs, in terms that are meaningful to 99% of the listeners.

TV game broadcasting is not hopeless

If you watched any part of the men's tournament on CBS, you heard some acceptable play-by-play and above-average situational analysis. True, they went astray in reporting substitutions or relaying the foul call, but on the average they did at least as good as the best play-by-play we heard in the women's games.

In one round 1/2 site, ESPN added transient displays of stats in windows that appeared to slide out from their scoreboard bug. That was a nice addition. I would like them to add similar slide-outs whenever a foul or violation is called to relay the call and the offending player's name. That innovation helped make the old Portland WNBA telecasts superior to all others because the announcers could talk about play-in-progress rather then supplying details more easily presented in a small window.

Technology to the rescue

When a game has poor announcers, many of us turn off the TV sound and listen to those radio broadcasters who routinely do a better job at play-by-play even when they are homers. I do this myself when I don't have to listen to sub-par broadcasters because I'm reviewing them. Thee problem is that many radio broadcasts are usually several seconds behind the video, especially if you are limited to Internet access for their broadcasts. You can get used to that, but it would be great if you had a choice of TV audio. Almost all channels have additional audio selections for multi-language sound. Why not offer the radio commentary on one of those audio options? That would leave the standard ESPN sound, for example, for those who want to be told 27 times during the game why Jamie Carey is a sixth year senior, and the alternate sound for folks who love the game.

03/28/05