I would happily give Eric another round on me. "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" As bad as it was to say that on your own coworker was wrong, someone needs to put the Jim Romes, or Frank Defords of the world in their place about the beautiful game if they have nothing intelligent, productive, or positive to say because its become too much for us who love the game. For ESPN.......I have to say this with all due respect, they are the worldwide bull****er in sports....When it comes to football, they usually don't cover the matches as they should be doing, grateful for "Champions League" though, but who can really say Log Rolling Championships Live from Minnesota, or the World's Strongest Men---pulling Citroen cars that probably weighs less than 100 tin cans is worthy of the title???? Get out there and cover the matches!!!Get some qualified, genuine, footy lovers to commentate on games. Stop trying to look for Ian Eagle to do play-by-play!!! And for Tim Scanlan, ESPN producer for MLS in his comments this season to plan and" try to make connections to other sports", in-game sideline talks, superimposed graphics,radar guns to track passing speed, mike refs or keepers,and mention John Elway in the game---STOP IT YOU BIMBO, this is the reason the game will never get off properly here. Stop trying to compare swiss cheese with cheddar. Stop using comparisons to other sports here.
Exactly. Why try to be innovative when what they've been doing has worked so well, right? I mean, every network is pounding down the door to grab that 0.6 avg. rating that MLS put up last year.
Speaking of sports casters, did anyone enjoy the broadcast by ABC of the DC Colorado game this weekend? OMG, it was the worst by far that I've ever heard. If that's what we're supposed to tune in to hear for the season, I'm out. I hated that they didn't really follow the play on the field. In fact, I didn't even know that Ihemelu was playing until about the 36th minute when they showed a close up. I guess I could have missed something between the long moments of silence, but between the 2 of them there just was no chemistry what-so-ever.
Its the reason why I stay away from the ABC coverage or anything that smacks of the Disney empire.....TOO GOOFY!!! speaking of which...whatever happened to Mike Hill??? who used to do play-by-play????
I'm assuming a good part of this is because to develop chemistry, you have to work together for a while. Foudy and O'Brien have not had that. But never theless, when it comes to O'Brien, I've bemoaned his hiring since day one. He's a baseball guy for crying out loud. But hey, they brought him in for the World Cup as well....and that's the reason I preferred watching the WC on Spanish TV this summer. I'm sure if Eric was there, things would have been much different. I don't think the coverage itself was terrible. It was nice to have a somewhat decent pre-game show, the line-up graphics were decent, and Disney has shown it' s willing to up the ante this season. Just for the fact the game was broadcast in HD is a big step. So that means we have two networks airing MLS in HD now...and soccer is the type of game that benefits greatly from that extra six inches of screen. We'll see what happens when the games move to ESPN2 this week.