Lizard's Rant

While this blog (and SportsLizard in general) is almost exclusively about Sports Collectibles, there are two large sections of SportsLizard that don’t deal with collectibles in the least - the Announcer Ratings and the News Reader. The Announcer Ratings in particular often result in passionate discussions about people’s favorite announcers (see Dana Jacobson). What usually happens is someone gets pissed off about something an announcer says and then Google’s them, only to land on SL.

The other day I received a well-written and, in my opinion, dead-on email from a ticked-off football fan that’s sick of the Monday Night Football booth talking about everything BUT the football game. Yes, it’s preseason, but oftentimes it seems like they try to entertain and forget that people just might be tuning in to watch football (what a novel idea). With her permission, Rose Ann has let me publish her email:

I just watched the monday night football game of the 49ers and the broncos. Or I should say I tried to watch it. I can not belive that we have had the season off and we still do not have any football announcer that are interested in football or can even announce the game. In the first 1/2 we interviewed some one on the side lines who broke a wrist and needed to address his fans. all the time missing the game in the back ground. then we invited jerry rice to the booth and we went thru his football carreer. all the time missing the game in the back ground. Then we went thru the michael vick dog charges. all the time missing the game in the back ground. then we went thru the best dressed list of men. all the time missing the game in the back ground. then we made fun of the nfl spending 10 million dollars on the reveiw booth. again missing the game in the back ground. you have 3-5 people in this announcer booth and I sure hope they are being paid minimun wage. Idiots and comedians. I would like to turn on the t.v. and watch the football game. Take John maddens crayons away from him drawing on the screen and get these has been want a be stars off the screen. let the public watch the game being aired. no comments. no jokes. no personell opinions. no interviews. LET ME SEE THE FOOTBALL GAME#.

THANK YOU.

Rose Ann

She also sent a similar email over to ESPN which prompted the following response from them:

Dear Rose,

Thank you for contacting us.

We value the comments and opinions of our fans. Your comments in
reference to our NFL coverage will be forwarded to the appropriate
department for review.

For live assistance with this or any other issue, please call Customer
Care at 1-888-549-3776 (ESPN) between 7:00 am and 2:00 am EST.

Regards,

Nicholas
ESPN.com
http://espn.go.com/

I admire her passion. Let’s hope that more fans of all sports speak up and try to get ESPN, Sports Center, and every announcing team they put out there to focus more on the games and less on “Who’s Now”. Seems like we shouldn’t even need to make that request of a sports network…