Preface: You may find my criticisms on the harsh side, but I will say right up front that I am someone who watches a ton of sport, and the criticism is deserved because on average we have dismal announcers compared to all other sports and it has hurt our sport’s popularity significantly.
Therefore my criticism is justified because I am passionate about advancing our sport. For example, the top 12 pairs of college football announcers are across the board outstanding at what they do. We deserve similar respect and we don’t get it enough.
Here are my rankings of current and former announcers from worst to best.
1) Larry Rawson – This was incredibly close between Rawson and Masback for the worst spot. Both did incredible damage to the mainstream popularity of our sport during their ridiculously long 40 plus year (!!) reigns from the early ‘80s to the present.
They oversaw a precipitous decline in ratings between the peak of popularity of T&F at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics until the rise of Usain Bolt in 2008, and even more importantly, where we rank in popularity as numerous “alternative sports” leaped over us as we plummeted into relative leper territory for ratings.
I must say here, our huge decline post Los Angeles (1985-2007) was not entirely their fault, because sports popularity is highly tied to the star power of the athletes. Unfortunately for us, our 4 biggest stars during this era, were Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Maurice Greene and Jeremy Warner. Their careers and performances were magnificent, but all strongly lacked in appeal to the mass casual audiences.
While they likely had great inner confidence and constantly (and obnoxiously) tried to express their confidence in interviews, they came across as insecure and they totally lacked charisma and their public personas simply weren’t likeable. They were not embraced by the casual fan at all. This is in stark contrast to the highly likeable, confident and very entertaining stars that followed such as Usain Bolt, Christian Coleman, Noah Lyles, Mike Norman, Ryan Crowser and now Athing Mu.
Back to Rawson and the damage he wrought on our sport. To his credit, he is knowledgeable and well prepared, but shockingly boring. He could take the most exciting homestretch race finish and you would think he was watching grass grow. He systematically destroyed any excitement in every race he covered. He transformed our thrilling sport to in the masses minds, the most boring sport in the world.
Contrast that with any announcer in any other sport and the excitement and unbridled release of energy by announcers for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, Soccer, horseracing, curling (!) when an athlete “scores” or “wins”.
Adding to his insufferably boring delivery, was his incessant, obnoxious, explanation of the basis rules of the sport: “Go down to your local high school track and try to run 1 lap …” This is another cardinal rule that all other sport announcers would never violate. They would never insult their audience explaining there are 4 downs in football. If you don’t know the rules, but you find the broadcast exciting, you will quickly learn the rules on your own.
The guy must also have an incredible ego. You would think after 40 years of criticism, he might step back and think “how can I improve my craft, how can I get better?” Forget it. Without an ounce of humility his attitude was “my audience (including your truly) are just a bunch of idiots and I know everything and I will never change, I am already perfect!”