Posted on 07/06/2006 8:55:05 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
The World Cup is generating record television audiences for soccer in the U.S. But some diehard fans think the coverage deserves a red card.
Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and ABC have been hit with complaints from soccer devotees that their telecasts are unsophisticated and mistake-ridden. The popular Web site Big Soccer has a thread titled "Pick your favorite insane thing said by the announcers so far."
A major gripe: ESPN selected an announcer, Dave O'Brien, who had never called a soccer game before this year to serve as the tournament's lead play-by-play man. Some English-speaking viewers have switched to Spanish-language Univision, which has out-rated ESPN and its sister cable network ESPN2 on average for the tournament in Germany.
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"They're trying to give us all this information to show us how much they know," says Steven Cohen, who has bashed ESPN on his "World Soccer Daily" show on Sirius Satellite Radio. "All they're showing us is how much they don't know."
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The soccer executives opposed the appointment of Mr. O'Brien. Their argument: using an announcer unfamiliar with the sport might not help ratings but certainly could hurt them. "Would you ever put a guy who had never called a sport before ... in the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Olympics?" a senior U.S. soccer executive says. "Never."
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
It's a little late in the tourney, but I've been listening to a lot of games on XM radio channel 148, which is exclusively dedicated to the World Cup. Their commentators are doing a fine job!
A sports columnist wrote years ago that American football was a game where 15 minutes of action was compressed into 3 hours.
Personally, if I score once in an evening than it's a good evening.
*Sigh*... such low standards... ;)
Obviously, your a soccer fan. Sorry, I'm not. As I said, it is fun to play, but boring to watch.
I used to be the same way. I loved to play it, hated to watch it. In the last 4 years though since college I have begun to enjoy watching it very much.
My point is that anyone can take any sport or activity and ridicule a strawman version of it. I actually enjoy American football and some other American sports, but it pisses me off when a soccer thread is posted here and, without fail, some idiots come crawling out of the woodwork with their lazy, dumb, "soccer is anti-American" type of comments (I wont call them arguments, because most of the time there isn't much logic or analysis involved).
The Kraft family, who own the Patriots, were being spoken of in a possible takeover of Liverpool FC. The Glazers, owners of the Tampa Bay Bucs, own Manchester United since last summer.
Wow, I bet you feel you are real tough by using that word...how old are you, by the way?
Forza Azzurri!
First, I'm no idiot. Secondly, what is a strawman argument in your opinion are legitimate reasons which I do not find soccer entertaining. If soccer were as big in America on the professional level as football, baseball, or stockcar racing, then there would be Monday Night Soccer, or other national telecasts on a major network on a regular basis. Now, I know that many people like soccer. That's great too. My opinion of soccer certainly won't take away from their enjoyment of the game. Hey, I like a lot of TV shows that never were very popular. I don't expect everyone to like them. So enjoy your soccer. I was just putting in my two cents worth on a public forum.
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