For once, I actually liked what they did for last night's match. I thought that the pregame was good as they were able to hype up the match by showing Landycakes' pissing incident. They showed clips of Gooch staring down a mexican player, and that little verbal confrontation between fans. They had camaras in many angles and even had that 3-D picture of players to break down the plays. All in all, I thought ESPN did a good job last night. The commentators were not great, but passable. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Wynalda back, but that's just my preference. If I was to grade yesterday's production of the match, I would give it a B+. It was by far better than all of the past games that I have seen on ESPN.
I totally agree, I thought Harkes did a great job in adding his perspective, while letting the game do the talking as well. I couldn't stand Wynalda and his three minute rants on players. I enjoying having the commentary flow with the game, not over the game for a change. I hope this is a sign of things to come!!
I liked everything except for the commentating. Getting rid of Wynalda was a mistake that very few will be willing to admit. For example, being completely lost on Gooch's throw in's, which he has been doing for years, shows a complete lack of familiarity with this team. It was made even worse when they continued to complain about them AFTER it led to a goal. That's just one example. The commentary was boring, and the rants were misplaced. Wynalda wasn't without his glaring faults. But, so far, things are looking worse.
My only complaint has to do with the Dempsey offside call. We had to wait too long to see a conclusive replay as to whether or not he was offsides. If we had been watching FSC they would have shown that within 60 seconds. I liked Wynalda. He had a passion for his job and I respected his commentating flair and how we wasn't afraid to get on the officials or bemoan players (even our own) for their poor defending, hard tackles or lack of effort. The new commentators, while I like John Harkes, sound too generic.
They did a good job, rewatching it now. But god dam I cant stand the sports minute crap. WTF do I care about college basketball at this moment, then they have the nerve to do a split screen. Not even a split screen, the dam basketball side was bigger ughhh..think they did it 3 times!!! but hey its in HD
And that made things sooo much better!! I even stretched the screen out, and repositioned the vertical size so that I didn't even have to watch the ESPN crawl below! It made the viewing sooooo much better. I agree that Wynalda's commentary at times, was pretty good. I just couldn't stand the arrogance with which he spoke.
I didn't mind Waldo's arrogance simply because he was fair and frank most of the time too. Like dcpohl said, he wasn't afraid to voice his opinions which I respected. His mouth got him into trouble with ESPN, but who really disagreed with the things he said that actually got him into trouble? I certainly didn't. I disagreed with other things he said, but the stuff that got ESPN torqued off at him was right on. Harkes seems to have improved since his early days on MLS Wrap or whatever it was on FSC where he constantly just said "look at this" (as if I wasn't watching the game) and I fully expect him to be a good commentator, but he lacks the willingness to be controversial. Besides, Waldo helped to give me one of my favorite all-time media moments for the US national team: He was criticizing the defensive effort put in by Ben Olsen during the Gold Cup and interviewed after the game Benny said "Well I guess it hurts to have your game criticized by such a defensive stalwart as Wynalda, but I'll have to live with it" or something to that effect. Wynalda thought it was funny too, so he may have been arrogant, but at least he knew it.
The announcers have room for improvement but HD, the camera work and the digital technology is great. When will the broadcasts on FSC and Setanta have this type of stuff?
the only thing I hated was the updates in the middle of hte match... so not needed.. that camera angle for the offsides goal was sick tho... never seen that before in any football match... Sky and BBC usually have that stupid computer animation thing...
Lots of cable channels are gearing up for HD, so hopefully soon. I enjoyed the production. The commentators were knowledgeable enough, the camera work was good, and the ESPN flair was just right. Granted I could do without the split-screen updates, but its nothing to take personally. They do that for every sport. Taking Wynalda out of the box was a good move. I've always found him to be too argumentative and polarizing for commentary. He'd be well suited to the sideline job though. I figure, as a former player, he'd have a better handle on what to say in that situation. Alan Hopkins is a real pro and good at what he does, but a tad bland.