Last week, I was watching the BCS football championship game with No. 1 Alabama against No. 2 Texas. That's the game where the Texas quarterback got knocked out super early in the game on his team's opening drive. The injured Texas quarterback had never lost a game that he started since his 8th grade school year. His replacement was a freshman, so I presumed like everybody else in the national audience that the biggest college football game of the year was over and an inadvertent disappointment. Yet, the freshman quarterback brought the team back in the second half, and this is where our story begins. It's not about the players, but about the announcers.
There's the play-by-play announcer in the broadcast booth. Seated next to play-by-play announcer is what's termed as the "color man," who annotates the telecast with personal quips and running commentary on what went right or what went wrong on the current play and various extraneous team-related and player-related trivia. Alas, if the color man announcer only knew when to stop and not wear out your eardrums, he would actually add to and enhance the enjoyment of the game, any game. However the color man in the BCS game was the usual motor mouth who reveled in the sound of his own voice with no less vigor than a minah bird. For example, "the coach is thinking after that play, blah, blah...." And how would the color man supposedly know what specifically the coach on the field was thinking?
Too many a color man have the knack of commenting on their own comment. If a given comment wasn't self-explanatory, than the less said about it, the better, because the next play of the game is underway and would you mind if we just move on and dispense with the self TiVo. Not fully satisfied on whether the illustrious meaning of their previous comment was fully conveyed to the viewing public, the color man then comments on his second comment, and so on, ad nauseum. I did search around if there was a simultaneous radio broadcast of the same game so I could shut off the volume on the tv and listen to the play-by-play on the radio while I watched the game live on the muted tv.
In the fourth quarter, the freshman quarterback has miraculously brought his Texas team back from all but certain defeat. On cue, the fuckin color man (paraphrasing), "....we have witnessed the freshman quarterback grow up and mature before our very eyes. I told ya all along that the kid was the greatest thing to walk on a gridiron since Jim Thorpe, blah, blah...." Sure enough, on the very next play of the ball game, the nationally lauded freshman quarterback throws an interception. Game ends. Darn jinx. Shoulda observed that....there'll be time for counting when the dealing's done. Bill Kazmaier on the World's Strongest Man is an exemplary color man in my opinion. Kazmaier always seems to add just enough and never too much to an ongoing event.
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6 comments:
Just curious...did the "P" word cross your mind or fell out of your mouth when you were listening to all this? Back home everybody I know utters the p-word off and on, even the P-people themselves!
Rowena- alrighty....*took me a while*. There is an actual term "color man" or "color commentator" assisting the main sportscaster in whatever sports game they're paired together broadcasting, originally, sidekick. It's not a race biased parlance and the color man, for whatever reasons, is seldom a negro individual, though that fact in itself may be criticized as an unfair employment practice, if you know what I mean. That said, Joe Morgan, (popolo) is among the best color man, IMHO, assisting Joe Buck in televised baseball games. Btw, I was under the impression that "popolo" was only used in Hawaii as slang word for african americans. Also, there are a few rabid african americans living in the islands who try to mis-characterize "popolo" as a racial slur, which it never was. da Idiots.
What? Wait...where does the popolo fit in? I figure if the color man was talking too much, and talking too stupid...well, didn't you let out at least one teeny, weeny podagee? When I read/hear the word color I don't even think of black. I think of what pair of shoes or handbag that is missing from my wardrobe.
How's about this one? One of my island girlfriends who is japanese-hawaiian, told me this one day when I was about to pick up her crying toddler (I just wanted to carry him, is all). She said, "Ro! No pick him up! He cry all da time...'cause he get podagee!" (obviously you can guess what ethnicity she married into).
I was shocked motionless.
opps! Forgot about them podagee's. My bad. Btw, usually misspelled locally with a "potogee."
my hubby watched the game too, but with headphones on so I didn't know what was going on while I was at the computer.
gigi- that freshman quarterback did keep it exciting for a while at least. Why can't you put on the earphones while at the computer, LOL.
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