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| Friday, January 2, 2009 06:51 PM |
| Football-Related Items |
 by Fëanor |
ESPN has arguably the best commercials on TV. Always clever and hilarious. Now they even have a new series of commercials that parody other commercials - those ridiculous ads for various wonder products announced by Billy Mays, THE MAN WHO YELLS EVERYTHING! What makes these parodies particularly excellent is that they actually got the real Billy Mays to do them. Brilliant.
I was just watching the Cotton Bowl, regrettably on Fox and not ESPN, and there was this confused old man doing the play-by-play. He was constantly messing things up, guessing at what had just happened and getting it wrong, repeating himself for no reason, stumbling over his own words. It was awful. Then I realized why: it was Pat Summerall! I thought they forced that guy to retire years ago. Why in hell's name is he still on TV?? The man has no idea what's going on! It's embarrassing. Somebody really needs to do the right thing and fire him.
And speaking of football announcers who need to get fired, how about Deion Sanders? Like Pat, he actually played football at one point, but you wouldn't know it from listening to him. He has no idea what he's talking about. In the game I saw him doing "analysis" for, he would watch the offense run a completely failed play where they got stopped at the line of scrimmage, and then he'd try to explain to us why it was a great play call and the coach did an excellent job. It was terrible! They practically lost yardage! What are you talking about??
Sanders works for the NFL Network, and I really feel the talent on that network in general is pretty poor. They should take some pointers from ESPN in terms of how to do a sports show, and how to do commercials for your own network. The NFL Network ads are really irritating. Making a good montage is really not that hard, but they do it all wrong. The clips they pick are annoying and stupid. They keep talking about how awesome their network is and how it gives you things no other network gives you, but then utterly fail to prove it.
Which is not to say I don't like having the NFL Network. I love it. It means I get to watch more football! I just wish it could be more like ESPN.
Can you tell that I love ESPN? SportsCenter is one of the greatest television shows ever created.
It's College Bowl Week, which is fantastic, because it means I can turn the TV on at any random time and be pretty certain that there will be an exciting football game on. And then we've got the NFL playoffs starting this weekend. But I'm already getting sad, thinking about the fact that football season will soon be over. What are we going to watch? I guess we'll have to fall back on Food Network again...
Speaking of which, we are really loving our new HDTV. I'm becoming an HD snob. I don't even want to watch anything that's not in HD. If I can't see every individual blemish on every person's face, what's the point? |
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