Best & Worst Broadcasters

You can post regional guys, but of lot of us may not understand as well as you might. As for national ones, I think Marv Albert (basketball) is the best in the business.

"YES!"

"It counts - and the foul!"

He can do football too (MNF on Westwood One Radio)

Al Michaels is pretty smooth too, and is pretty versatile. Conversely, his replacement on NBA on ABC, Mike Breen is the pits. Nonstop talking from a former Knick radio announcer (he does not understand the differences between the two mediums).

Joe Buck, for both football and baseball, tries too hard to make a big call, almost as if he is trying to be remembered a la Albert or Michaels. On every fly ball or first few steps in an open field by a running back, he raises his voice only to have the ball die in the warning track or have the back get tripped up by a linebacker.

 

Harry Carey

 

Joe Buck's kind of grown on me. Overall I'd say one of the best is the long-standing Monday Night Football team. And perhaps the greatest of all is Howard Kosell.

 

Gotta go with Madden and Michaels, both are classic. Can't say I really like the MNF crew though.

 

Oh definitely John Madden. If it weren't for his broadcasting, I wouldn't know that the team who scores the most points in the game will most likely be the winner.

 

Musberger? I'd rather have Keith Jackson call a Notre Dame game than listen to Musberger constantly bumble on about things he knows nothing about.



Kirk Herbstreit is climbing my personal list, while Pat Hayden does an incredible job with the Notre Dame home games despite being a former Trojan. For baseball I like Buck, but I really like McCarver for his insights. Basketball is easy with Marv Alberts, but that could be a bit of nostalgia hearing him call the playoff games in the 90s.


EDIT: Madden even being brought up is a crime, unless of course he is mentioned in jest

 

The best broadcast has to be Ken " the Hawk " Harrelson, the White Sox television broadcaster. He's been broadcasting the Sox since 1991. And he's got some cool lines. Everytime a Sox pitcher strikes out an opponent, Hawk will say, He Gone. And everytime a White Sox player hits a home run Hawk says, You can board it on the board, yes!

 

From the Baltimore area where I'm from, the legend was Chuck Thompson calling all the O's games for decades. He passed away a few years back.

 

QFT

 

Hey successful and knowlegable are two different things. I'm not saying he doesn't have the ability to do it in a physical sense, he doesn't have a grating voice or anything like that but I've listened to him dozens of times where the other announcer has to correct his logic on strategic moves throughout the game.


Something like a team punting the ball with three minutes left in the game when they're down a score but they have all three time outs. Musberger will ask why they aren't going for it, and act like it's a dumb move. Meanwhile the expert announcer has to step in and let him know what's going on.


It's just stuff like that that makes me put other people ahead of him. John Madden is kind of the same although he thinks fans are as dumb as the day is long, at least Musberger doesn't think we're idiots. He's just not entirely sure what's going on himself.

 

The only thing Musberger is good for is waxing romantic about Big Ten football. And that White Sox guy sounds like a homer with dumb schticks like Stirling for the Yankees.

 

Madden and Buck are the two I loathe the most.


Jaws and Al Michaels are my favorites.

 

Madden is by far the worst. Never has anyone tried to hard to make the obvious seem profound.

Dick Vitale has great energy, but it's cancelled out by the fact that he roots for Duke or North Carolina - even when they aren't playing. He tries too hard to insert himself and his antics into the games. He's become a caricature of himself.

 

announcers who talk the least often say the most, and vice versa.

 

Agreed with Madden. Buck I can put up with.

 

That's not the point: he was put on this earth to say "MMMMICHIGAN, OHIO STATE, FROM THE HORSESHOE."

*my impersonation is a lot funnier in person

 

Strike three. No, wait! Line drive to third!

Yeah, I like the one's who realize that it's on tv and not the radio.

 

I liked the last ESPN MNF crew. I'm talking Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire. Those guys were fun together. This new crew is no good. Bring back Maguire and Patrick!

 

Ugh, I can't stand Joe Theismann, though Tony Kornhauser makes up for him. As far as national broadcaster I really like Steve Kerr and Reggie Miller, as well as some of the others mentioned above me.

 

Best: Al Michaels

Worst: John Madden.

 

I was watching a game once where Madden was with Summerall. It was a Sunday afternoon game. Madden went off on a tangent (shocking) and started talking about this group of people in the stands that were all wearing yellow shirts. They were obviously part of some group or something. I never saw someone talk about something so much without having a clue about what it was. Madden had the teleprompter and everything. He started going off saying, "See this group here, they're a part of something. Now, I don't know what it is, but it's gotta be good."

What?!