Half of the Field of 68 is awesome. Or 2/3rds when they bring a guest on.
They have the formula that increases their potential to succeed. Like it or not many of us are drawn to negative drama. Check out the number of threads that are receiving attention in this forum. Temery points out the number of posters after a loss vs. a win. It’s almost always two to one or greater.
We experience it every time we’re on the highway and there’s an accident.
Very few people watched women’s figure skating until the Carrigan incident.
Howard Cossell made Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay) into a icon and ABC benefited from it.
Dukie V made Duke into the team everyone loves to hate and they became the program viewers turned on only to hope they’d lose. And it became a ratings coup for ESPN.
Having reasonable commentators sitting opposite one who is a lightening rod that everyone loves to hate and the reasonable have every opportunity to counter the “bad guy” works a lot better than having only all reasonable or all hated commentators.