TV sports guys are idiots

In my market, yes.

Last September, Rudy Carpenter was in an ASU press conference, on the afternoon of the season-opening MNF doubleheader.

TV guy: "Rudy, a California guy like you must be happy you get to root for a California team in both games tonight."

First off, seriously, is this how you're going to fill part of your two minutes at 6:20? What Carpenter thinks of MNF?

More important, across the room, someone -- I wish it had been me -- says the four teams playing: "Baltimore ... Cincinnati ... Arizona ... San Francisco."

 

I wonder how some of the brilliant print guys would sound if their work went out spontaneously, live, without editing and rewriting and the delete button on their keyboards.

 

at the lower levels tv folks barely make any money. at my old paper the highest paid tv sports guy made less than 22k - and it wasn't a tiny market by any means.

 

Few weeks ago we had a local team in the state baseball finals. Game 1 is on a Thursday night, finishes up around 9. I get home in time to catch the highlights on the news. In a two-minute package from the game, they talked to two players and a coach. They misidentified one player and said he was the starting pitcher -- not only did this guy not pitch, the guy they said he was didn't pitch either -- and got a stat wrong under another's name (said he scored the team's only run when he actually drove it in).
OK, that's bad, but I can sort of understand it when you only have an hour to turn around your piece. I'm sure I've made plenty of mistakes like that on deadline over the years. But the next night they run a lookahead piece for Game 2 (it was on Saturday) with the same player and his position misidentified and the second guy's comments taken out.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe.

 

i stand behind my initial statement.

 

Thanks for explaining the individual LOB thing. I must be a TV guy at heart because until then I wasn't sure what that meant in an expanded box... carry on...

 

The ones who push and shove during the postgame herding need a swift kick in the ass or a punch in the mouth.

 

it's apples and oranges, 21. sure, most of us ink-stained wretches would be lost speaking on camera. but the talking heads are supposed to do it because they're good at it.

that said, in my vaaaaaast experience, while we should not generalize, many to the talking hairdos don't know diddly about the sports they cover. may not be their fault, but it's sad but true, imo.

by the time a talking hairdo hits a big market or a national gig like espn, hopefully they kno much more than their tv brethren in smaller markets.

there are "idiots" in print, too, to be sure. but the tv foofs are much less shy about, um, showing off their ignorance.

 

There are two kinds of people in TV - not just sports, TV in general. There are those who are in TV because they enjoy the challenges of covering events, of getting that perfect shot, of having that great bite someone else didn't get. There are also those who are in TV because they want to be on TV, want to be "famous", want to be a hot catch on the dating scene. The second kind are the bane of the existence of the first kind, and are also the types being complained about on this thread.