F1 MERCENARY wrote:
What happened is that once upon a time, regular ole news personalities were called up to anchor or serve as guest commentators for a wide variety of sporting events, many times knowing little to nothing about the sport, and for a very long time it went well. Then broadcasts the likes of ABC's Monday Night Football began testing the waters by adding former players to their commentary team for their opinions derrived from actual hands-on expertise, and it worked. The reason it did so was because the fans know the athlete and appreciate their perspective (usually) because they know far better than those whom never participated in sport themselves. Since then, it tricked down to other sports like basketball and baseball and it worked really well. Since those successes however, many professional athletes realized this would be a chance to remain connected to the sports they love indefinitely, and strategically major in broadcast and sports journalism in college and for some it transitions beautifully and is magic.
In some sports such as boxing, while the expert commentary is extremely insightful, the grammurr and vocaboolerry is atrocious at best and can drive you mad. LOL Hopkins anyone? But for all those illiterate ex boxers you have a handful of gems the likes of Teddy Atlas, Andre Ward, Paulie Malignaggi (my absolute favorite and the best Boxer-Commentator).
Tennis has several former players commentating on the sport and for the most part it's brilliant, none more so than McEnroe.
In great part, former racing drivers transition into commentating beautifully in the series they used to compete in. Danny Sullivan, The ever smooth, slightly slow, eloquent, southern twang of Bobby Unser, Darrel Waltrip (not a fan of today's NASCAR but he's excellent), Derek Daily was pretty good in ChampCar as well. In the end their inside knowledge is far greater than the traditional commentator because they lived the experience. Eddie Jordan, while a bit comical at times, does indeed add a good deal of insight so I'm perplexed at times when people dump on him and his tacky as hell shirts and roadkill. LOL
As for James Hunt, I think we can give him a little more credit as he sat beside the legendary Murray Walker at a time where perhaps Murray was no longer in his peak years. Overall I'd give hunt an 8 out of 10.
I half agree that this modern approach (using ex-competitors rather than pro broadcasters) is an improvement. I guess it depends on the individuals, as you say (for every Brundle there's a Blundell) but perhaps also the sport. If they're not that bright, or perhaps haven't had training, they can make a sport seem inaccessible. As a non-soccerball fan whenever I'm exposed to TV coverage it just seems like a lads club. They have no interest in welcoming in strangers, it's all in-jokes, jargon, assumptions of shared opinions and knowledge etc. But most annoyingly to me few of them can speak properly! I couldn't care less if your job is kicking a ball or pointing a car. But when it's
speaking about someone kicking a ball or pointing a car you should understand how to communicate. There's no excuse for it. Karun Chandhok can use perfect English to explain a complicated technical issue. Johnny Herbert can't string a sentence together. He
never makes any sort of point, he just re-frames the question incomprehensibly. He's a lovely bloke but perhaps he shouldn't be in the job.
My particular hangups mean I'd quite like to see more journalists in prominent roles because they tend to be more opinionated, balanced and coherent, whilst still being well (usually better) informed. Competitors come with their hangups and aren't used to having opinions or caring about things outside their sphere. Listen to DC talk about the top teams for three minutes and you know exactly which ones upset him during his first career, but try and get him off the fence on a wider political issue that doesn't impact on him and he looks bewildered. In spite of his credentials he has nowhere near as much knowledge of what's going on as journos like Mark Hughes, they should use people like him more.