Sports Hot Takes: Watchability, Sports Betting, and More

Image Courtesy of Pew Research Center 

By Anthony Curioso

Many sports fans have opinions on which sports they feel are worth investing time and money in and how successful the professional leagues for most of these sports are in their attempts to provide a product that will convince more fans to watch. I am no exception; I, too, have many opinions on these matters. Inspired by an article published three weeks ago in the Amherst College student newspaper, my hottest sports-themed takes are divided into several categories, including my justification for each take.

General Watchability

Hot Take 1: Baseball and hockey are the only popular sports in the U.S. that I will want to watch if either is on TV.

I’m sorry, football and basketball fans. But I have gripes with both sports that I can’t ignore.

In a baseball or hockey game, the unpredictable nature of those sports means that you never know what’s coming next, whether it be teams scoring or making excellent defensive plays. Sometimes, you see absolute chaos with teams trying to find the baseball or hockey puck and get it into their control. 

However, in basketball and football, the players can move the respective balls in far fewer ways, making the games repetitive and boring. Both sports are constant blowouts, and their extremely high-scoring games do not help the repetitive, boring nature. Neither does the fact that both sports have so many lengthy stoppages in play that viewers spend more time watching the players do whatever they do between plays than watching players making the plays.

Hot Take 2: I only watch football during the Super Bowl, which I only watch for the snacks.

Though I rarely watch football at home or at the Catholic University of America (CUA), I will still watch the Super Bowl. This is because many delicious snacks are always available at every Super Bowl watch party I have attended. Whether it be an informal gathering with just my family or watching the Big Game with the CUA community at more official watch parties, there was always a wide variety of food available, from pizza and chips-and-dip for my family’s gatherings to burgers and hot dogs at the CUA watch parties. 

Sports Betting

Hot Take 3: Sports betting is a complete distraction for everyone involved and causes fans to be much more stressed than they need to be.

By now, whether they watch baseball or not, most sports fans have likely heard about the sports betting scandal involving likely future Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Shohei Ohtani and his now-former interpreter. This unfortunate situation cast a shadow on Ohtani as a player, with at least one fan sending a hoax bomb threat targeting him and several other fans taking to X to voice their opinions on the issue, which were then quoted in Sports Illustrated.

The Ohtani situation is one side effect of the massive problem sports betting continues to cause for fans and athletes alike. In every sports game, there are thousands of outcomes fans can bet on, which sports networks stress constantly on their shows. There is an actual show on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) called ESPN BET Live, which airs multiple times every week, that spends significant time attempting to cover everything fans can bet on in sports worldwide. Pro sports leagues need to nip sports betting in the bud, let the athletes focus on being athletes, and let the fans focus on watching their favorite teams and players without worrying about losing their life savings over the outcome of a game.

TV and Radio Broadcasting

Hot Take 4: The hate for ESPN Monday Night Football play-by-play man and former Fox lead baseball and football announcer Joe Buck is undeserved.

Sports fans often blast Buck for rambling too much, being selfish, and showing favoritism toward one team during his broadcasts. However, none of these claims are based on much fact.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Buck offered to narrate videos of random things people did in their new staying-at-home lives, with the lone request for interested parties to donate to charity. Buck was also a vocal opponent of the National Football League (NFL)’s Rams team moving to Los Angeles nearly ten years ago, thus leaving behind his proud hometown of St. Louis. These two things alone should be enough to squash the belief that Buck is selfish.

As for the allegations of rambling too much and favoritism, Buck’s commentary provides valuable insight to viewers of his broadcasts, who may not understand the significance of a certain play or game. Despite my not being old enough to stay up to watch them live, Buck’s calls of the former St. Louis Cardinals third baseman, David Freese’s walk-off home run in the 2011 MLB World Series and the Chicago Cubs’ curse-breaking final out five years later still give me chills each time I watch the clips of those moments, helped by the energy with which Buck described the plays as they unfolded. Buck kept his explanations of these plays concise, seemingly preferring to let the crowd’s reaction inside the stadium emphasize the significance of these moments instead of going on a tangent of over-analyzing them.

Hot Take 5: Local play-by-play announcers should be responsive to their team’s performance in a game, whether the team is doing well or not.

Many fans show great distaste for the times when local play-by-play announcers strongly react to their teams’ plights and successes. That is exactly why opposing fans did not like longtime Bruins play-by-play announcer Jack Edwards during his career in Boston: his blunt nature when the Bruins let fans down and his zeal when the Bruins did well both proved too much for fans to handle. 

Edwards was not the only person to receive criticism for his attitude toward his team. Longtime New York Mets TV play-by-play man Gary Cohen also faced disdain from at least one former Mets player for supposedly not “rooting” for his team enough. Recently un-retired New York Yankees radio play-by-play announcer John Sterling was once described as a “narcissistic, condescending blowhard.”

None of these criticisms consider that these three men were simply tasked with describing the play of the teams for which they were employed and voicing any opinions they may have about how their teams were playing. For this reason, it makes sense that they should be enthusiastic and committed in their praise or admonishment of their teams.