Most devoted sports fans agree that there is a need for diversified commentators and analysts. Mainly, commentators should read their contracts a little more closely and realize that they should be doing more observing and less opining—leave that to the analysts. Or don’t, because even analysts could be a little more factual. Or, a lot more factual.
The commentary issue can be easily rectified by putting a microchip into every commentator’s frontal lobe, which makes him or her comment exactly like Doc Emrick. But what about the analysts? What should an analyst do?
Let’s take a look at a common segment from a few of my “favorite” analysts and do some analysis of our own:
After Arsenal defeated Everton two-nil this weekend, Robbie Mustoe, one of NBC’s pre- and post-match analysts said that the Everton players looked like they were “okay to lose.” I believe this makes absolutely no sense. Let’s eliminate the idea that the statement was to prove that Everton were underperforming; I reserve the right to take anything an analyst says on the job as an analysis and not just something they happened to say. The lack of sense in this statement derives from the definition of sport as a competition and the fact that there are an insignificantly small fraction of instances in which a sports team would be “okay” with losing a game. These are athletes at the highest level of competition in their sport, and more specifically, Everton is having a rough patch in their season, at which point losing a game should not be anywhere in their plans.
The post-game program’s host, Rebecca Lowe, later returned the topic of discussion to Mustoe’s statement by basically asking the game commentators whether they saw any sense in what Mustoe had said. Amazingly, commentator Phil Neville agreed with Mustoe, saying, “I think he has got a point … What you’re seeing at the moment is a manager that likes to play a certain way and a set of players that don’t believe in that way.” This also makes very little sense and is not founded on any concrete evidence other than Everton having lost the game and Phil Neville’s own idea of Everton manager Roberto Martínez’s style of play. You might think, however, that having managed the club for almost two years now, Martínez would have a handle on what sort of playing style he preferred and would be able to communicate that to his players.
Suffice it to say that Robby Mustoe and nearly the entire analysis crew at NBC Sports could use a little more evidence in the foundation of their statements. This issue is widespread throughout the modern world of sports coverage, a place where saying things that offend people or wearing crazy outfits to get more viewers is not uncommon (See Don Cherry).