Last week I complained about some of Fox’s Sunday Night Hoops coverage.
This week, I thought it only fair to provide some follow-up commentary on the broadcast production. You will find both positives and negatives:
(1) Last week I complained about the off-the-mark, moron-centric “rap” that opened Fox’s Sunday Night Hoops broadcast. This week, I didn’t have the heart to tune in so early and so I missed the promo. Did anyone see it?
(2) Why was the volume so low during the Manhattan broadcast and what is the deal with the announcers sounding so muffled? The sound quality of the production was really bad.
(3) The ACC’s Player of the year and All-American, Julius Hodge, did not start the game and all Fox could give us is “we will talk about that a little bit more later in the broadcast”?! Do what? It wasn’t until 5:40 pm and the game was tipping that Fox elected/was able to update us that Hodge was late to some team events and would come off the bench for Manhattan.
(4) Guess what? Herb Sendek had a 3.95 GPA at Carnegie Mellon. Have you ever heard that one? Come on Fox, the guy is in his ninth year of coaching and I don’t think that I have watched a single State game in that time without somebody mentioning it. Let’s find out something else about the guy and teach us something.
(5) Other than point #4, I enjoyed the announcers of the game (Rod Thulin and Dan Bonner). I thought that the initial poster on this thread on Pack Pride’s message boards made a really good point – Wasn’t it nice and refreshing that the announcers paid to broadcast the Manhattan @ NC State basketball game primarily focused on Manhattan and NC State? Non-existent were the rants and extended conversations about Duke and Carolina and every other team in the country because the announcers had not done enough preparation for their current game.
(6) Some of the posters on that thread also were giving Dan Bonner some of the credit I think that he deserves. I think people are generally more annoyed by Bonner’s personality and delivery than his actual broadcasting skills and knowledge of the game. I’ll take that kind of annoyance over incompetence any day of the week.
