On Jul 8, 2006, at 3:12 PM, Jerry Wolper wrote:
I will mention that ESPN is in a no-win situation. If they aim their coverage at knowledgable fans, they lose the newbies, while if they simplify for the casual fans, people who understand offsides become frustrated.
I don't think that that's true at all. It wasn't simply a case of "dumbing down" the coverage; it was saying completely stupid things. There are many different ways to approach their coverage, but saying things that simply are not true is not one of them.
Case in point: during one of the Round of 16 games, a player crossed the ball from the wing, and kicked it directly into the arm of the defender. No whistle, although the attacking team was crying for a handling call. ESPN's color commentator, Marcelo Balboa, then made the comment "That's a handball, but you're not going to get that call at this point in the game".
First off, there is no such infraction as a "handball". Having the ball touch your hand/arm isn't a foul. There are rules against "deliberate handling" of the ball, which require that you have time to control the position of your arms and fail to do so to avoid the ball, and getting a ball kicked at you from a few feet away certainly doesn't qualify. So Balboa is pissing off knowledgeable fans, and misinforming newbies.
Offsides is certainly a difficult concept for someone new to the sport to grok, but they could have a pre-made graphic showing the basics that they show once a game for the newbies, and after that, stop explaining it. There were many other things that they could have been doing differently, but instead they made someone with no soccer experience their lead play-by-play man, and while he has a nice voice, he wasn't terribly interesting.
-- Ed Leafe -- http://leafe.com -- http://dabodev.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
