I'm not much of a sports fan, but around the end of the year I usually watch some football games, both the deciding professional match-ups and a few of the college bowl games.  While doing so this year, I have decided that sportscasters do more to distract from the game than to illuminate it.  These folks chatter incessantly about irrelevancies and often neglect altogether what is happening on the field.  I do not refer to the statistical background and other arcane details that the announcers give; I realize that these facts can be interesting to avid sports fans.  What I refer to is the constant chatter that transpires before, after, and even during the plays.

A case in point is a minor bowl game that I watched, in which my alma mater was playing.  Had it not been for the on-screen displays, most of the time I would not have known what down it was, where the ball was located, or any of the other details that were important to the game itself.  The sportscasters rambled on about personal reminiscences, other bowl games (past, present, and future), and told each other little stories that didn't even remotely relate to what was happening on the field.  After each play, on those rare occasions when they seemed to be paying attention, they armchair-quarterbacked what the teams should have done instead of analyzing the play.

In one striking example during a pro game, the sportscasters informed their national audience that a certain player enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – a detail that might have been of some interest, except that they spent two minutes discussing how this player made the sandwich by putting the peanut butter and jelly together on one slice of bread instead of putting each on a separate slice of bread.  This commentary continued while a key play was being shown on the screen.  Viewers, who were no doubt more interested in the game than in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, did not find out what had happened on the field until the replay.

I'm grateful that on-screen displays now make it possible to follow the game without listening to the announcers.  I'm accustomed to hitting the mute button during commercials.  By the fourth quarter of the college bowl game that I watched, I didn't bother to turn the sound back on.  I followed the game much better without the annoying chatter of the sportscasters, and I enjoyed it more – even though my team lost.  From now on, I shall watch every game with the sound off, turning it on only when I need to hear a referee's explanation of a penalty or some other vital information.