OT - Tom Crean color analyst

Submitted by umchicago on

I know we liked to laugh at Crean while he coached at IU but he is the current color analyst on the Northwestern-Georgia Tech basketball game on ESPN.  He is outstanding.  He just started doing this gig and he may be one of the best I've ever heard.

Great analysis and he actually knows the players on both teams.  Give credit where credit is due.

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Basketball

s1105615

November 28th, 2017 at 8:31 PM ^

Color analyst has to be one of the most difficult jobs in sports broadcasting. Most add nothing to the broadcast by playing to those who aren’t knowledgeable about the game (describing basic stuff most fans already know). The key is to be knowledgeable enough to point out the stuff that even a lot of seasoned fans miss and to do it quickly. So few are ever any good at it that I usually watch games with no sound.

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Mr Miggle

November 28th, 2017 at 8:49 PM ^

But those jobs are filled by professional announcers who have worked their way up the ladder. Color analysts are coming from a different career and get gigs based on their name recognition. Some turn out to be very good, but many bomb out or go back to coaching and are replaced by another newcomer. 

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Yessir

November 28th, 2017 at 10:18 PM ^

PBP is done, imo.  Lost art. They don't even call the game anymore.  No more "Watson bringing the ball up the court, passes to Mathews on the wing, etc, etc, etc."

The PBP peeps just have this long drawn out conversation with their color partner while the game is being played. I think its to cover them not knowing the players.

Don't know who was doing PBP on our last game, but she was horrible.  

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APBlue

November 28th, 2017 at 10:27 PM ^

While I mostly agree with you, the hypothetical example you offer is more of a radio PBP call, not a TV PBP call. Radio needs the more specific description of the action ("moving right to left," etc.), while, obviously, TV doesn't. However, like I said, I mostly agree with you. There are no up and coming Keith Jacksons calling college football out there. He'll, there isn't even an up and coming Brent Musberger.

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Yessir

November 29th, 2017 at 12:11 AM ^

I agree with you. Not Keiths coming up and ESPN won't make anyone do their homework to do good pbp. 

With TV angles, I'd prefer to hear old-fashioned PBP or radio PBP as you called it.  

It's early in the season and the producers of the games are more interested in showing a local eatery than who just checked into the game.  So the PBP becomes more important for me. Especially early in the year. 

Schulman(sp?) and Bilas are ok, but Schulman didn't do PBP for Maui.  He had a conversation with Bilas about basketball and everything else under the sun, but no real PBP. 

Baseball still does a fairly good job of pbp and some pro basketball teams do to. ESPN sucks at PBP for NCAA though.

Ok, rant over. moving on. Nothing to see here. 

 

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lmgoblue1

November 28th, 2017 at 8:40 PM ^

He is excellent. Thanks for posting, glad I tuned in. Very insightful and easy to listen to. Maybe this is where he belongs. I'll try to forget the incident at Michigan.

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Mpfnfu Ford

November 29th, 2017 at 10:05 AM ^

Start off amazing. Then a producer tells them they gotta dumb it down or some imaginary casual fan of sports that doesn't REALLY exist any more won't get it, or coaches start complaining about you giving away what they're doing. Then before you know it, the color guy you previously loved is spouting cliches about WANTING IT MORE and then you're dead inside.

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