Credentialless in Eugene wrote:
This has nothin' to do with the loss of credentials. I just want to add a few comments about Flotrack.
Their talking heads generally do a good job in a difficult role. They "hip" it up far too much for me, but who is their main audience? Mostly high schoolers, as far as I can see. And they do a world of good for high school coverage by giving a kid many reasons to get psyched about the sport, and about his or her own potential.
Really, it's often thankless work trying to summarize an entire nation's high school action week-to-week, and to give it some pizazz, and to appeal to a younger crowd. I think Jojo is pretty darn good -- sharp with recall, fast with her reports, and able to snare kids for interviews that, by and large, are pleasing, not mournful or forced.
Jimmy Stevenson was a pissah, definitely, and I can't see anyone topping his act, but he's gone and that's that.
One of his replacements -- Dennis -- is generally OK in the content of what comes out of his mouth, but far too often I can't understand his rapid-fire near-lisping, nasally mumbling. That's a huge frustration, because he's typically insightful for high schoolers, anyway, and I'd have thought he'd be working to improve on his delivery. No obvious improvement to me...yet. Just slow down a little, Dennis!
But I gotta say his call of the Penn Relays Boys DMR this year, where Drew Hunter stormed back to a .001 sec victory as the anchor for Loudoun Valley High School, was laughably, ridiculously, and erroneously pro-LaSalle Academy and Jack Salisbury -- the losing team. (Nothing against that school and that excellent young horse...who rebounded by winning the adidas Boost mile over 4:01 miler Thomas Ratcliffe). But Dennis TRIED -- he's learning by doing in the public eye, which means failing from time to time, and that takes balls to do your job publicly like that. And I respect him for enthusiastically working race after race after race for the live broadcasts from the Penn Relays. Couldn't be easy! He's young, and I'd bet he was seriously embarrassed by his fawning Salisbury kiss-up in that one race, too. More than anything else, though, he seriously needs to learn to enunciate better. He will improve, I bet.
Thanks, Flotrack. Despite what I hope you will see as constructive criticism, I tip my hat to you. Mind you, my hat has the sun visor facing to the FRONT, but I could care less if Jojo's hat is backwards. And everyone, if you look around, you'll see quite a few hats being worn backwards. Big effin' deal!