Inane Commentary

I was watching some college bowl game last night, not sure which one it was; I had it on while I was finishing up some things preparatory to going to bed. It was on ESPN, whose announcers are particularly prone to inane commentary, especially late in a game which is not close, but these guys were singularly obnoxious.

They spent several minutes discussing the “problem” of the lengthy bowl season and that it results in “too much practice time” for teams in the later bowls. They pointed out that for the teams in tonight’s championship game there will have been almost three entire weeks for them to practice. Oh, the horror of it. They opined that the NCAA should establish some rules on the maximum number of practice sessions that each team could hold.

Given that the two teams are playing each other, not teams from earlier bowls, and each team has an equal amount of time to practice, what possible difference can it make how much practice time they have?

Further, given that we want to see the best possible level of play in the final college football game of the year, the game which determines the national champion, why would we want to limit the amount of practice they devote to preparing for the game?

These guys convinced me that commentators merely babble to fill air time; that they talk, as my father used to say, to hear their brains rattle. Assuming that they have brains.