Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Yeah. Yeah. She's Hot.

Okay. TigerBlog gets it. A.J. McCarron's girlfriend is attractive.

At this time yesterday, the young woman (her name is Katherine Webb, and she was Miss Alabama apparently) had fewer than 1,000 Twitter followers, or way fewer than, say, Princeton Athletics. Today? She has 82,000.

It was pretty offensive to hear Brent Musburger's comments about Miss Webb. It was also awkward and embarrassing.

For that matter, why is Brent Musburger doing games on ESPN, let alone big games like the BCS championship game?

Have you ever met anyone anywhere who said "oh yeah, I love Brent Musburger; he does a great job?"

You know who's a way better broadcaster than Musburger? Tom McCarthy, that's who. So is John Sadak. And Derek Jones. And Dan Loney. And just about anyone else who ever broadcast a game.

TigerBlog cannot for the life of him understand why ESPN sticks with Musburger. He destroys any game he does.

And he somehow managed to hit an all-time low last night, with the way he fawned over a woman who is, by the way, 50 years younger than he is.

Not that the game was worth watching. TB said Alabama would win big, and he was right, as the Tide rolled 42-14 in a game that could have been 142-14. The remarkable part is that had Oregon not lost to Stanford, then that game probably is Oregon-Notre Dame, with Alabama on the outside looking in.

Last night's game was over quickly, so much so that TB was already watching "Big Bang Theory" repeats long before it ended.

The best text TB got last night came at halftime of the game, when it was 28-0 'Bama. It came from Craig Sachson, Princeton's football contact, and it said "the next play of college football I watch will be the kickoff against Lehigh."

As for the "Big Bang Theory" episode, it was the one where Raj dates the deaf woman and it was hilariously inappropriate, but not in a creepy/Musburgerish way. TB is still laughing about how Raj told Howard (who could do sign language) to tell her that he has a deep voice like James Earl Jones or when he tells Penny after the woman dumps him that he can't get over her and is still watching TV muted.

Meanwhile, back at Musburger, TB is still trying to figure out why networks take announcers that nobody likes and forces them on the American sporting public, especially since people are tuning in to watch the game, not the announcer.

Had it been Sadak on the call with Kirk Herbstreit all season, the audience would have been the same (or larger, TB presumes, since there have to be people like he is, who turn off any game Musburger does).

So why pay big dollars to announcers?

Some announcers actually do enhance the games they broadcast, but it's more of a plus to have one them doing the game you want to watch rather than a draw to the game itself.

Perhaps no announcer does more with a game than Mike Emrick, whose best sport is hockey but whose work on water polo at the most recent Olympic Games was equally as exceptional.

Emrick, nicknamed "Doc," will be at Baker Rink Friday night to do the Princeton-Union game on NBC Sportsnetwork.

It's a huge weekend for Princeton, coming off its sweep of Harvard and Dartmouth.

Union is tied for third with nine points. Princeton is in second with 11. Quinnipiac has 20, by the way, and is very unlikely to be caught. RPI, Princeton's opponent Saturday, has four league points and is in a three-way tie for 10th.

Princeton (and Quinnipiac) do go two weekends without playing, which is like knowing you have to make a pit stop and the other cars in the race don't. You need to be as far out in front as possible when you leave the track.

The significance of the weekend speaks for itself.

Having Emrick at Baker Rink will be an added bonus.

Emrick is a great announcer, and TB marvels at his ridiculous level of preparation, especially when doing Olympic hockey or water polo with Eastern European teams with hard pronunciations and unfamiliar players that he rattles off effortlessly.

He also seems to be a great guy - friendly, nice, upbeat. TB has met so many big-time announcers through the years, and most turned out to be exactly how they come across on TV.

As for Emrick, he doesn't seem like the kind who would leer at a woman 50 years his junior, all on national television during the biggest college football game of the year.

No matter how hot she is.






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

HURRAH!! Somebody agrees with me about Musburger.