Saturday, January 5, 2008

When Your Job Consists of Talking About Sports, Maybe You Should Learn the Rules

NBC has a very dynamic duo calling the Redskins/Seahawks game right now. Chris Collinsworth (more like Collinsworthless! LOL!) is the color guy, which is enough by itself to make me wish FOX or CBS had the rights to the game. But with Tom Hammond accompanying him and doing play-by-play, it's a perfect storm of idiocy in the booth.

Just a minute ago, the Seahawks screwed up a kickoff return. The kick was very high and short. It bounced at about the 30, rolled past the two deep return men, and was grabbed by a Redskin on the run at about the 15. The player then ran into the end zone, as his momentum was carrying him that way. Hammond:

Touchdown, Redskins!

Now, if you didn't know that an onside kick can't be advanced, that's fine. I'm not making fun of you for that. It's a bit of an obscure rule. There are probably plenty of big football fans out there who didn't immediate realize the play wasn't a TD. But here's the thing about those fans: they're not being paid to tell millions of viewers what's going on during the game. They're probably employed in capacities other than "TV Sports Analyst," so they don't have time to learn the rules of the game. Hammond doesn't have that excuse. He's being paid a lot of money to learn those rules. Therefore: for saying this, he's a big time dipshit.

2 comments:

Derpsauce said...

hah!

The Bard said...

I agree with you, and so does Greg Easterbrook. From last weeks TMQ:

"NFL Network announcers Bryant Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth declared that the penalty was for faceguarding. But the rule against faceguarding was abolished in 2005! When Collinsworth played, what Wilkinson did was illegal; now, it's perfectly legal. Once again, the Patriots benefit from a mysterious major officiating call in their favor. And NFLN guys, if you're going to represent the league, know the rulebook, OK?"