Can We Clone Gus Johnson?

I’m fed up with a lot of sports announcers. In terms of sports broadcasts, anyone who grew up in Southern California was completely spoiled. Our play-by-play announcers were all absolute legends, Chick Hearn in basketball, Vin Scully in baseball, and the underappreciated Bob Miller doing LA Kings hockey games (most of you know him as the play-by-play guy in the Mighty Ducks movies). Don’t get me wrong, there’s still guys I like today (Gus Johnson), people who really enhance the game (Gus Johnson) by getting you more excited about what you’re watching (Gus Johnson). But among announcers and colormen, there’s a lot more bad than good around right now. Here’s a worst-7 list, since everyone loves a list:

7. Joe Buck, NFL on FOX, MLB on FOX. Joe, do you even like sports? Joe Buck’s tone of voice during games is the same tone a doctor should use when explaining that you have colon cancer.

6. Mike Tirico, Monday Night Football, NBA on ESPN, PGA Tour Events. Does any announcer have less ability to focus on the game than Mike Tirico? He suffers from that same disease that Tony Kornheiser does – namely that he likes the idea of sports more than the games themselves. You can tell he likes to read about sports, argue about sports, wax poetic about sports…but he doesn’t really like to watch sports. I hate when he just drifts off into idiotic off-topic conversation, which is pretty much all the time.

5. Tim McCarver, MLB on FOX. Fire Joe Morgan has of course catalogued his follies at length. One of my favorites from them:

Tim McCarver, after a Carlos Delgado RBI double to put the Mets up 7-2 over the Yankees:"The carousel continues, here at Shea Park. It's like a park."

Problems:
1. It's called Shea Stadium.
2. What?

4. Tony Siragusa, NFL on FOX. Why does Goose stand on the field? Is it because he’s too fat to fit in the booth with Kenny Albert and Daryl Johnston? His comments are always prefaced with the fact that he’s standing on the field, invariably leading to gems like “from the field level, I can see that the Giants are really stopping the run game” or “I’m standing on the field, and let me tell you, it is VERY cold today” or my absolute favorite, “from my vantage point at the back of the end zone, I couldn’t really see what happened there, could you guys in the booth see what happened?”

3. Tommy Heinsohn, Boston Celtics. I only hear this blowhard give his “Tommy Points” and indulge his comically blatant, semi-drunken homerism on highlight clips, but even that is enough to make me detest him. Note to all Boston (and also, especially, Detroit Pistons) fans: try listening to a local Laker  broadcast one day. Hear for yourself what it’s like to hear a legitimate, professional, mostly unbiased basketball broadcast. Your broadcasts make me sick.

2. Dick Vitale, College Basketball on ESPN. It would be one thing if you conveyed genuine, uncontrollable enthusiasm (Gus Johnson). But no. You sir, you are nothing by a hype man. Don King without the hair. I beg of you, please, please, please stop talking. I’ve never in my life rooted for someone to have throat cancer. But you’re pushing me, Vitale. You’re really pushing me.

1.Thom Brenneman & Charles Davis, BCS on FOX. The BCS Championship Game was literally the single worst broadcast of a major game I have seen in my entire life. I’m prone to hyperbole, but I don’t think I’m going overboard here. There were the 40 times Charles Davis repeated “the clock stops on a first down” and Brenneman’s literal deification of Tim Tebow and never knowing the down and distance and then just a general inability to even discern what was happening on the field. “Tebow steps out of trouble to gain one yard……uhh, plus five yards for a total of six.” The absolute lowlight came when these guys got confused as to what down it was, and started screaming for Oklahoma to go for it on 4th and goal, when in reality, it was only third and goal. That humiliating video follows.



The way I see if, if you can’t get a good announcer for a game, just play music in the background. Wouldn’t it be funny if Oklahoma played USC in basketball, and whenever Oklahoma was ahead, they played like, Carrie Underwood, but whenever USC was ahead, they played Dr. Dre? This would be especially hilarious in a back-and-forth game. And if that’s too outside-the-box, maybe invite T-Pain to announce the game, provided he uses his vocoder to talk. I think that would be an improvement over the current situation.

If you’ve read this far, to cheer you up, here’s a little clip from my man, Gus Johnson.