Penn Relays Coverage Sooooo Much Better

Ah crap they just said Rawson/Stones are covering Drake tomorrow.

I think Ato Boldon(he's already proven he can announce on the big stage with CBS and ESPN), Carrie Tollefson(She's announced some road races and xc meets for foxsports) and Marc Davis(I enjoyed his commentary on flotrack at Mt. Sac) should announce all the meets.

It's a pretty tightly run meet, which meant they'd have a lot of races to show, and they threw in a few good taped ones, too. I was a bit worried when they had a hard time getting the first event off with false starts (and the false start that wasn't called a false start), but things went smoothly and briskly after that.

And then they went to commercial in the middle of the college men's 4x800. Right after the 3rd exchange when the race was just getting hot. Aren't the gaps between races long enough for commercials?

they def screwed up the penn relays coverage a lot. they were calling people by wrong names and saying the wrong teams. one example was in the dmr they kept saying lincoln anchored team canada, while brennen was who really anchored that team. i thought they did a poor job.

Yeah, I think it could have been better but before we judge too harshly I think we need to tune into Drake today, where Larry Rawson will be putting his "unique" spin on the proceedings. It could have been so much worse, and while I was a little annoyed by things like not knowing it was Brannen, you've got to admit it was 10x better than the last few meets that were on TV.

In fact, tune into the London (or Boston last week) coverage and you'll see what I mean. I can sum it up in one word "Ritzenburg".

just helping wrote:

they def screwed up the penn relays coverage a lot. they were calling people by wrong names and saying the wrong teams. one example was in the dmr they kept saying lincoln anchored team canada, while brennen was who really anchored that team. i thought they did a poor job.

The PA announcer said Brennen was leading off on the 1200 leg, so it was clearly a faulty relay card. Can't expect the announcers to know every single pro athlete by face.

they also said that they had trouble seeing the bibs from their viewpoint

Ever see the dozens of fat ass Indianapolis whales that USATF and TV has down on the field. Can't one of those 300 pound slobs put down their Jerk Chicken for 15 seconds, ask the names of each of the relay team members as they are queued up trying to stay warm and loose in the clerk's cage area behind the finish line at Franklin Field. Then use a walkie-talkie or cell phone and tell the TV annoucers ?

jh. Let's complain so much that they don't show any Meets on TV anymore.

You're an idiot.

"announcers"

Not always a complainer wrote:

I'm watching it on ESPN right now, and I have to say it is a thousand times better than the usual Rawson-style crapfest. Seriously, I'm actually enjoying watching without cringing every 5 seconds.

There were a lot of runners misidentified and a number of teams misidentified. Ato was particularly a problem.

Yes...I think a professional broadcast should be able to work through these issues.

They were way off in the High School Boys 4*400 championship of America. They told us the wrong team got disqualified and then told us that the PA team took 2nd, when really they finished 6th. But other than those little issues ESPN did a much better job than the Penn "live stream" which would only air a couple of races here and there.

Carol Lewis is the biggest waste of space to ever be given a microphone. What even qualifies her to be a track & field personality?

It should be Ato Bolden and Breaux Greer doing commentary.

ph wrote:

They were way off in the High School Boys 4*400 championship of America. They told us the wrong team got disqualified and then told us that the PA team took 2nd, when really they finished 6th. But other than those little issues ESPN did a much better job than the Penn "live stream" which would only air a couple of races here and there.

They had FSU and Texas A&M mixed up. The Distance Medley they had Lincoln and Brannen mixed up. There were a few others also. There's no reason to minimize the problems unless the entire basis is going to be "at least they showed the events".

After watching what the Brit crew did on Universal Sports with the London Marathon (it was stunningly abominable), I may never again be so hasty to criticize the likes to Carol Lewis or Larry Rawson

You're really putting Ato Boldon in the driver's seat!

Thank goodness he won't cover any more relays for a while. It was the ONLY thing he knew how to say! Everyone is in the driver's seat!

The thing that frustrated me the most, aside from not knowing the names of the people who were running, was that they would start saying something, and then seemingly close their eyes until they finished the sentence, regardless as to what was ACTUALLY happening. They had to finish their little story even if it wasn't relevant.

Why can't they get people's names right? They have the ability to watch the same thing I do, can't they? This is their job and they don't know the difference between Nate Brannen and Matt Lincoln? Oh but they try to sound so smart saying that "he" had a lot of experience at Penn since he went to Penn State. TOO BAD IT WAS BRANNEN!

I watched 5.5 hours of running coverage this weekend. The best I heard was London. No one was trying to impress the viewers with their crap knowledge. We didn't see any screen shots of ESPN.com surveys. There were no athlete features for runners who didn't cross the finish line. There were even moments of silence except for the feed itself. Absolutely enjoyable. The difference was that London was showing event coverage; Penn and Drake were trying to be journalists.

Also, LoLo Jones looked like an idiot with that tuxedo uniform. Really stupid. Sure, she's hot, but she looked dumb.

Weary wrote:

After watching what the Brit crew did on Universal Sports with the London Marathon (it was stunningly abominable), I may never again be so hasty to criticize the likes to Carol Lewis or Larry Rawson

the London feed was great. it was almost like watching the us meets on mute, except when there is something important to say, they will say it. otherwise they didn't bother you.