One thing I don't like in sports is home town announcer bias.

JJacks

Hi all,

I just wanted to post this to express how I feel about obvious home town bias in sports games these days.

I live the L.A. / Orange County area and for football we often see Raiders and Chargers Pre-seasons games and the bias in the Raiders games especially is crazy sometimes. Just tonight I was watching and hear things like:

"Darren McFadden is clearly the best RB in the NFL - bar none." - OK, he's very good when healthy, but I think some people in Houston, Minnesota and a few other places would debate that comment.

Later Carson Palmer throws a pick, and while they admit it was a bad throw, etc. they say the refs missed a holding call on the Lions defense, despite the fact no Raiders seemed to protest. He also praised a routine screen pass catch by McFadden as an "unbelievable catch"! This was all in about one half of one game!

If you watch many of these games, you can find a ton of examples.

In the local sports,
Dodgers - Vin Scully seems to be very good at not favoring the home team - he just cheer with them and is equally praising of good players on any team.
Angels - Definitely a bit tilted to the Angels at times, not as dramatically as the Raiders pre-season guys.

Kings - I think Bob Miller and Jim Fox do a very good job of generally rooting for the Kings, but not being biased in their comments.
Ducks - Well, here again we have Brian Heyward, who I like and I think is a nice guy, but is almost always questioning penalties on the Ducks and happily accepts penalties on the other team. Sometimes he does admit to a Duck penalty or questions a penalty against the other team, but not often.

I grew up in North Dakota (no, seriously!) and the bias was also so obvious with Twins and Vikings announcers and sports news guys. A Twin would be hitting .290 with 15 HRs in the middle of the year and they'd act like he was truly one of the best players in baseball history. They he'd fall off, be gone, and they'd never mention him again! Or I remember when Herschel Walker was traded to the Vikings - it was like the Vikings were automatically the team to beat in the NFL and it was quite obvious they would now be a dynasty. No one seemed to question giving up so much for one player or even how they would actually win every game with other teams able to focus on stopping Walker.

I respect announcers and commentators who like their teams as they watch them all year, but who also give credit to great players on other teams and give them credit for great plays, etc. Not just home team cooking.

Just my little 2 cents.

JJacks

digicat

What would be the difference between an announcer "rooting" for the team and being "biased" towards the team?

Dboneesq

Phil is THE ORIGINAL homer ... as biased as he was (after all ... the Yankees were his life) I loved listening to him. RIP Scooter!

Cubby

"you can put in on the boaaarrrrdddd..."

larryallen73

In reality Vin Scully is one of the rare ones who is as about impartial as they come for a home town announcer. You get spoiled thinking that's the norm but most other places it's homer time!

Justacommeman

No one is worse then Ken Harrelson. He is in a league of his own. Frightening actually.

Ernie Harwell was level much like Scully.

MJ

WTCG

Every home town play-by-play announcer is biased to some extent. Frankly I don't blame them and it is expected.

It gets annoying when it's the announcers that are doing the nationally televised games. Joe Morgan when he's calling a game is one big Yankeephile and can't seem to stop referencing them even when two teams completely unrelated to the AL East are playing. Last month in a Giants vs Phillies game that was shown nationally when Matt Cain and Cole Hamels homered off each other in the same inning the announcer sounded like his mom had died when Cain hit his homer then when Hamels did the same in the bottom half of the inning the same guy in the booth sounded more excited than half the fans in the stands.

In NFL regular season games that are nationally televised I notice there seems to be less of a blatant announcer bias although you know some are an eyelash away from publicly fawning over the Patriots and the Saints. Some would even say when John Madden was calling games he had a small bias for the Bay Area teams.

JJacks

<< <i>What would be the difference between an announcer "rooting" for the team and being "biased" towards the team? >>



Well, I guess the difference IMO for example is Vin Scully and the Kings announcers seem happy for the viewers when "their" team gets a run or a goal or whatever, but for example the Raiders' guys are always talking about how great this guy is or how great the Raiders look or whatever. They are trying to sell the viewers something that may or may not be there, or completely true.

JJacks

Justacommeman

when the sox lose it's pretty entertaining. Usually every loss is attributed to a bad call or a bad break. The White Soz should really never loose and he reports the game in that context. Enjoy

MJ

digicat

I could see how it would annoy fans of the opposing team, but I think it adds to the entertainment value for the local fans.

57loaded

<< <i>What would be the difference between an announcer "rooting" for the team and being "biased" towards the team? >>



Ray Fosse?

But this makes me biased against Fosse.