Mike Gorman - 1997 UConn Vs Rutgers

[psconn]

Just watched an old Rutgers game. Besides the walk down memory lane with the players, I loved Mike Gorman as the play-by-play guy. He actually pays attention to the game and gives you information relevant to it!... how unusual. When there's a foul called, he tells you who the foul was on and how many the player and team now have... brought tears to my eyes.

Was then, and is now, the best basketball play-by-play guy I have heard.

 

[Waquoit]

I always felt that Gorman was a big, yet unsung, factor in the creation of the UConn WBB juggernaut. There was no difference between his Celtics call and his UConn call. Like Geno always said he wasn't coaching women, he was coaching basketball players; Gorman wasn't calling women's basketball, he was calling basketball. I think that attitude combined with the high level of play brought many of the curious into the fold.

 

[Zorro]

I would be very curious to know if the current fashion of broadcasters talking about anything BUT what is going on on the floor is something they have been instructed to do by whomever is employing them, or if it is just something that they have all drifted into by copying each other. It drives me batty to the point that I very seldom now listen to them, preferring to watch in silence. Does anyone have an authoritative answer to this question?

 

[BostonCanuck]

I would be very curious to know if the current fashion of broadcasters talking about anything BUT what is going on on the floor is something they have been instructed to do by whomever is employing them, or if it is just something that they have all drifted into by copying each other. It drives me batty to the point that I very seldom now listen to them, preferring to watch in silence. Does anyone have an authoritative answer to this question?

Couldn't agree more on how bad many of today's TV broadcast teams are. It's like listening to two color analysts go at it for a couple hours, as though someone at the network forgot to assign a play-by-play announcer to the game.

To me, the best broadcast team in the country is the one that calls the action for the Seattle Storm, Dick Fain and Elise Woodward. Anyone else on the board appreciate their work?

For the record, I do like Dave and Doris, ESPN's flagship team for the NCAA women. I thought they did a great job calling the recent Maryland game, and hope we get them again for South Carolina and the USF season finale.

The absolute worst commentator in the business, and this is by a country mile, is Ann Myers Drysdale for the Phoenix Mercury. As many here will recall, she called the USA women's games in Rio for NBC. We had to endure her pontificating, and the constant self-promotion of her own Olympic exploits from forty years ago, all while she completely ignored anything and everything that was happening on the floor during our team's history-making run. It literally drove me over the edge last summer, to the point that I found myself yelling at my TV on multiple occasions in a futile effort to get her to shut up. (Pretty harsh, I know.)

 

[Huskee11]

psconn, thanks for reminding us he did the UConn women`s games back in the day!

Mike is a gem. Easy to listen to, always prepared, wonderfully understated, and calm but more than capable of conveying great excitement when appropriate. Example - Larry for three..................... GOT IT!!!!

Agree that he does keep his audience informed of a lot of basic information - score, time, foul situation, number of points of the player who just scored, timeouts left, etc. Wish there were more like him. What a pro!

Never steps on the toes of the color analyst, who in most cases (amazingly, still) is that bombastic, jovial, incisive, referee-hating Tommy Heinsohn. Mike sets him up beautifully.They make a great pair!

I don`t watch the Celts as much as I used to but whenever I turn them on, I feel like I am listening to an old friend. He has been doing their games for at least 30 years, I am guessing.

 

[UcMiami]

I would be very curious to know if the current fashion of broadcasters talking about anything BUT what is going on on the floor is something they have been instructed to do by whomever is employing them, or if it is just something that they have all drifted into by copying each other. It drives me batty to the point that I very seldom now listen to them, preferring to watch in silence. Does anyone have an authoritative answer to this question?

I think it dates back to the incredible early success of Monday Night Football and their decision to go with three personalities in the booth. With three there was no obvious role for the third and the booth became much more it's own entertainment show. That success (which was as much due to a new time slot and generally good NFL games) started trickling down to other broadcasts. The Olympics was another source of the 'back story' creeping into live sporting contest coverage - and the backstory kept expanding and expanding till it became almost half of Olympic contests. Producers trying to expand audience beyond the traditional sports fan who wants to actually see the action.
It is refreshing when you get back to old school calling of games.

NB - the same thing has happened in other walks of life - actual hard news is replaced with personalities, and the continued celebration of personalities as opposed to to people who actually do things or produce things or create things.

 

[Kurebeach5]

Just watched an old Rutgers game. Besides the walk down memory lane with the players, I loved Mike Gorman as the play-by-play guy. He actually pays attention to the game and gives you information relevant to it!... how unusual. When there's a foul called, he tells you who the foul was on and how many the player and team now have... brought tears to my eyes.

Was then, and is now, the best basketball play-by-play guy I have heard.

I ran into Mike on an Amtrak train some time in the late '90's (he was headed to NYC from Boston) and I expressed similar sentiments to him. He seemed genuinely pleased with the adulation, a nice man as well as a superior announcer !!

 

[psconn]

psconn, thanks for reminding us he did the UConn women`s games back in the day!

Mike is a gem. Easy to listen to, always prepared, wonderfully understated, and calm but more than capable of conveying great excitement when appropriate. Example - Larry for three...... GOT IT!!!!

Agree that he does keep his audience informed of a lot of basic information - score, time, foul situation, number of points of the player who just scored, timeouts left, etc. Wish there were more like him. What a pro!

Never steps on the toes of the color analyst, who in most cases (amazingly, still) is that bombastic, jovial, incisive, referee-hating Tommy Heinsohn. Mike sets him up beautifully.They make a great pair!

I don`t watch the Celts as much as I used to but whenever I turn them on, I feel like I am listening to an old friend. He has been doing their games for at least 30 years, I am guessing.

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I remember Mike Gorman doing a few Sun games also. I was amazed at his knowledge of the players on both teams and of the WNBA in general. He was teamed with Rebecca and that was a really great WNBA broadcast team. I watch many Celtic games and enjoy his work there on a regular basis.

 

[tomcat]

I lived in Rhode Island when Mike Gorman was a sports guy there. He was top-notch then and stayed that way. No matter what game he was calling, it was better because he called it.

 

[Gus Mahler]

I would be very curious to know if the current fashion of broadcasters talking about anything BUT what is going on on the floor is something they have been instructed to do by whomever is employing them, or if it is just something that they have all drifted into by copying each other. It drives me batty to the point that I very seldom now listen to them, preferring to watch in silence. Does anyone have an authoritative answer to this question?

I blame it on Vitale. After all, he's in the HOF. [not that I'm authoritative]

And of course you were asking about play-by-play. I guess I couldn't resist the opportunity.

 

[BigBird]

I would be very curious to know if the current fashion of broadcasters talking about anything BUT what is going on on the floor is something they have been instructed to do by whomever is employing them, or if it is just something that they have all drifted into by copying each other. It drives me batty to the point that I very seldom now listen to them, preferring to watch in silence. Does anyone have an authoritative answer to this question?

Authoritative? That's for you to judge. But here goes: In the "old" days, most basketball broadcasting was on local radio stations. The nature of that medium is that the play-by-play person has to be both the eyes and ears of the audience. When later that generation of PBP guys moved to TV, their first inclination was to do a "radio style" presentation - complete with every detail. Eventually, producers and other managers told them, "You talk too much...they can see it as well as you can." So, they began to drift into a more baseball-like style with choppy phrases for the game action, wrapped around longer (often irrelevant) story telling. The early greats of baseball broadcasting were notable for their rambling discourses on everything from poodles to politics. Even so, early radio PBP took its cues from the stoic, reliable, masterful personna of the radio news rooms.

In the 1980's on forward, ESPN began to develop a style of sportscasting in which the commentator was also viewed (or was allowed to view himself) as an entertainer. At the same point, we saw an increase in the number of former athletes coming into the broadcast booth. They had alway been there, but now they were more numerous, more untrained, underprepared, and a fair bit insecure. So they copied the new ESPN model, and became jokesters, sidekicks, and story tellers. Some of these new entertainer-style guys were actually good, or at least entertaining. Many of the rest were/are simply obnoxious.

Broadcasting cannot be separated from economics of business. The pressures from sponsors, network affiliates, and audiences have moved us squarely into a "whatever sells" view of sports production. As traditional radio/TV markets continue to fragment like a well thrown egg, and as the "new" media (cable and satellite) are continuing to loose their shirts as they loose massive chunks of audience, the pressures to lower the cost of production and distribution are being strongly applied. This does nothing to improve overall quality, as the new faces in the media are, in many cases, working for far less coin that you might suspect.

I hope this answers your question and is helpful.

 

[Gus Mahler]

To me, the best broadcast team in the country is the one that calls the action for the Seattle Storm, Dick Fain and Elise Woodward. Anyone else on the board appreciate their work?
I absolutely do.

Elise is a great combination of someone who knows the game and makes you feel as though she's just conversing with you about the game. Sounds young and enthusiastic without being silly.

 

[BigBird]

I blame it on Vitale. After all, he's in the HOF. [not that I'm authoritative]

And of course you were asking about play-by-play. I guess I couldn't resist the opportunity.

Actually Gus, I was thinking the same thing. Dicky is a great gentleman, but as a broadcaster, he made a better (?) coach. But I give him credit in that he knew his limitations and poked fun at them and at himself. He was direct, but not arrogant or self-aggrandizing. It comes down to whether one sees him as a ringmaster - or as a clown.

 

[Gus Mahler]

Actually Gus, I was thinking the same thing. Dicky is a great gentleman, but as a broadcaster, he made a better (?) coach. But I give him credit in that he knew his limitations and poked fun at them and at himself. He was direct, but not arrogant or self-aggrandizing. It comes down to whether one sees him as a ringmaster - or as a clown.

Ironically, when he first started (late '70s?, early '80s?) he was excellent. Extremely knowledgeable and stayed in his own lane.

 

[BigBird]

...The absolute worst commentator in the business, and this is by a country mile, is Ann Myers Drysdale for the Phoenix Mercury. As many here will recall, she called the USA women's games in Rio for NBC. We had to endure her pontificating, and the constant self-promotion of her own Olympic exploits from forty years ago, all while she completely ignored anything and everything that was happening on the floor during our team's history-making run. It literally drove me over the edge last summer, to the point that I found myself yelling at my TV on multiple occasions in a futile effort to get her to shut up. (Pretty harsh, I know.)

Harsh? Maybe. But you wrote for me too on this one. She was not just dreadful, but totally infuriating.

 

[BostonCanuck]

Harsh? Maybe. But you wrote for me too on this one. She was not just dreadful, but totally infuriating.

At least we had Swin back in the studio. What a welcome relief it was every time they cut to her, which was not nearly often enough.

 

[cabbie191]

I find a significant divergence between tv broadcasting of BB games and football. Granted there is wide continuum of talent but most NFL broadcasters are great at interpreting the action and keeping up to date with penalties, etc. No reason why it can't be done with BB games.

 

[Intpseeker]

Listening to the Celts or Huskies, I still get reved up when the announcer says that 'they line up going left to right'. With that simple phrase, I can see the game in my head from that point on.

I still turn off the sound on the tube and listen to the radio call.

 

[BigBird]

I find a significant divergence between tv broadcasting of BB games and football. Granted there is wide continuum of talent but most NFL broadcasters are great at interpreting the action and keeping up to date with penalties, etc. No reason why it can't be done with BB games.

While you may be right -in a way, the differences between calling football and basketball are considerable. FB gives you most of 30 seconds between plays, BB almost never does.

If I were to be granted one magic wish for broadcast sports, it might be to require every aspiring PBP performer to do three sports (and get them "right") before doing football or basketball. Those three: Collegiate hockey, volleyball, and softball. When you get to the point that you can really do those well, the rest of it is comparatively easy.

 

[cabbie191]

While you may be right -in a way, the differences between calling football and basketball are considerable. FB gives you most of 30 seconds between plays, BB almost never does.

If I were to be granted one magic wish for broadcast sports, it might be to require every aspiring PBP performer to do three sports (and get them "right"rally ) before doing football or basketball. Those three: Collegiate hockey, volleyball, and softball. When you get to the point that you can really do those well, the rest of it is comparatively easy.

For several years, I was a basketball scorekeeper for a men's intramural league as well as high school games. I really enjoyed doing play by play calling to myself and thought I was relatively decent at it. Of course it's totally different when actually speaking, and then speaking to an audience, and having to deal with commercial breaks, etc.

 

[BigBird]

For several years, I was a basketball scorekeeper for a men's intramural league as well as high school games. I really enjoyed doing play by play calling to myself and thought I was relatively decent at it. Of course it's totally different when actually speaking, and then speaking to an audience, and having to deal with commercial breaks, etc.

I used to explain the difference between being a listener and being a broadcaster as "the difference between eating a McDonald's hamburger and cooking it." To your point, I have often suggested that people take a little audio digi-corder and go to a game, sit in the top row, and try to do PBP. It is a revelation. So much so, that doing exactly that was required of all freshmen in the sports broadcasting program when I was heading that enterprise a few years ago. It's not just the speaking part. When they were required to listen to their work and self-critique it (in class) the learning really starts to happen. It's surely not rocket science, but being an effective broadcaster today requires some skill, training and preparation.

 

[HuskyNan]

I miss Robin Roberts as an announcer but can't begrudge her the success she's had. Of the current crop of announcers, I like Kara Lawson, LaChina Robinson, and Stephanie White.

 

[Gus Mahler]

I miss Robin Roberts as an announcer but can't begrudge her the success she's had. Of the current crop of announcers, I like Kara Lawson, LaChina Robinson, and Stephanie White.

Yes. Vanderbilt's gain was our loss.