Cover Me Boys, I'm Going In

“Unforgettable in every way”

Irving Gordon

There are people out there, as I sit and write this, popping off (with little to no justification) that they “put The Golf Channel on the map”. I know better, I was there. And what I know is there are three folks responsible for what would become the most successful niche sports network in history.

Joseph E. Gibbs, whose idea the channel was.

Arnold Palmer, who gave it the concept gravitas and then strong-armed the PGA TOUR into believing in it.

And Tiger Woods.

That in no way means there weren’t talented people all over the building. Michael Whelan was a genius and made sure the network looked and “felt” top notch when the lights went on.

Matt Scalici litterally got us on the air making sure everything in the place, from an engineering standpoint, functioned perfectly.

 Now I also know The Golf Channel launched in January of 1995 and at the time Tiger still had two United States Amateur Championships to win. But that time, between when Joe and Arnold flipped the switch and Tiger turned pro, gave us, all of us at the channel, time to grow, to make mistakes, to find our way, and to establish a rhythm. Sure, it’s a billion dollar business, with millions of viewers, now but in 1995 it was anything but.

We had no idea who was watching, how many of them there were, or even how they were able to see us. And there were times when Mr. Gibbs honestly worried about how he was going to pay all of us. I wish I had a dime for every time I heard someone say, “you mean there’s a golf channel?” or “there’s really a tv station that only shows golf?” And believe it or not those questions, and more like them, were asked AT GOLF TOURNAMENTS! My answer was, “Yes there was” and there still is.

Yesterday I watched Tiger Woods win the Masters for the fifth time. It was his first Masters victory since 2005. I was happy for him and I was thrilled for the great game of golf. It also brought back amazing memories. In 1995, when The Golf Channel debuted, Tiger had not yet had his “hello world” moment but he was more than worth talking about. And that’s what The Golf Channel did. On the news shows, the instruction shows, and around the hallways and water coolers in our headquarters. And while they were all talking Tiger back in Orlando our team was out showing live golf all over the country.

Believe me I know that at some point in time there would have been some sort of golf television network. But not in 1995. Not without live golf tournaments to show and, again, not without Tiger Woods. Joe Gibbs, Robert Greenway, Gary Stevenson, Peter Gordon, and the rest of the executive team knew that too so they secured the U.S. broadcast rights to the European Tour and the LPGA. Then Joe, with Mr. Palmer, went to Ponte Vedra and convinced the powers that be there to let this brand new golf channel, with tens of dozens of viewers, broadcast what was then the Nike Tour. Then they convinced them to throw in the half a dozen PGA TOUR events that no other television network wanted. They were painfully aware that if the channel had any chance to succeed it had to spend most of the broadcast day showing live people hitting golf shots that mattered. Without that (see Back 9 Network) their Golf Channel or ANY golf channel had zero chance.

Through the years and through the magic of television we introduced golf fans to Stewart Cink and David Toms and Chad Campbell and Jimmy Walker and Pat Perez and Jason Dufner and Zach Johnson and Brandt Snedeker and Jason Day and oh so many more. And back in 1996 we met Tiger Woods.

He turned pro after winning his sixth straight USGA title and played in nine PGA TOUR events. Four of them were tournaments that were only televised on The Golf Channel. All four days. He played in Moline, IL and Endicott, NY and San Antonio, TX and Orlando, FL. During those events our team interviewed him more than a dozen times. Each time he was polite, friendly, punctual, and generous with his time. After rounds he came right out of the scorers tent and right to Donna Caponi or Gary Smith or Mark Lye and talked about his round. Before events began his people told our people where and when he would be available and he was there, where and when they said he would be. And he sat with us for as long as we needed him.

By contrast I had also once been part of a golf broadcast team tasked with interviewing Jack Nicklaus on several occasions. During one of those we waited 81/2 hours for him to show up. He and his team told us he’d do the interview at 8 AM and Nicklaus finally showed up at the appointed spot at 4:30 in the afternoon. Sadly, when it came to Jack back then that wasn’t unusual. But I digress.

In 1996 Tiger should have won in Illinois, on our air. He could have won in upstate New York a week later, on our air. And he finally DID win in Orlando, a month later, on our air. I hope I never forget the image of Tiger, Donna and Mickey and Minnie Mouse at the trophy presentation. Tiger was a great player. We knew, heck almost everybody knew, that. But few among us could have predicted the level of greatness he would, and will continue to, achieve. The Masters victories in 1997, and this one 22 years later, helped paint a clearer picture of that for everyone.

Fast forward those 22 years and Golf Channel is now a behemoth. Nobody questions its existence though some are still unclear about the network’s humble beginnings. And Tiger Woods is once again the toast of the town. So many memories that involve so many people are etched in my mind and the best part about April 14, 2019 is that I now know there are so many more to come.

Thanks for reading. I wrote a book about my life in television and my time at The Golf Channel. It’s titled, Cover Me Boys, I’m Going In (Tales of the Tube from a Broadcast Brat). Because of the great folks at Beacon Publishing Group it’s available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and a number of other outlets. Grab a copy and enjoy the stories!

“You’re unbelievable”

EMF

I spent the past week or so taking one for the team. I watched sports. A lot of sports. Several networks, dozens of games, different sports, probably close to a hundred announcers. It was all part of a grand experiment, research I’m sure that would have netted me unlimited dollars in grants had I the wherewithal to apply. The mission was simple; close my eyes (or not), open my ears, and then listen to how the use of words has become increasingly unimportant in American television sports broadcasting. Truth be told I was on the lookout (or more descriptively the “hearout”) for one word.

It was unbelievable. The word, not the experience.

I watched baseball, football (college and pro), hockey, gymnastics, golf (women’s and men’s), and basketball. I tuned to the ESPN family of networks, Golf Channel, The NFL Network, NBC, Fox, FS1, The Olympic Channel, NBCSN, ABC and NBA TV. I even dipped in to The SEC Network, The Longhorn Network and something called Eleven Sports. And there they were; young, old, men, women, former players, career broadcasters, home team announcers, unbiased professionals. Almost all (with only a couple exceptions) telling me at one time or another, during the course of the telecast, that this, that, or another, thing was “unbelievable!” One person, who many consider among the best in the business, said it in back to back sentences describing two different players. Another, less celebrated but equally continually employed, used the word twice in the SAME sentence. As I continued my research, with pen and paper in hand, I found announcers of every level, on each broadcast, of all the sports, said “unbelievable” 56 times. FIFTY SIX!

Between spurts of yelling at the screen like a mad man I made every effort to keep in mind there are top tier athletes, especially professional ones, who do little else but practice, perfect, and perform their craft for hours a day. Every day. So a centerfielder, jumping up, placing his glove in exactly the right spot, at exactly the right height, and robbing a hitter of a home run or a wide receiver, wearing sticky gloves, reaching out to grab a perfectly thrown spiral with one hand or a golfer holing out from a greenside bunker, or the fairway, or even from the tee box 210 yards from the hole are, in fact, among the MOST believable accomplishments.

Oxford states there are 171,476 English language words in current use. One fourth of those, it says, are adjectives. That’s approximately 43,000 words. One of those words is unbelievable. It’s a perfectly good word. It means, according to Webster, “too dubious or improbable to be believed” or “so remarkable to strain credulity.” Perfectly obvious definitions, neither of which applies to anything that happens on a field, course, court, or pitch.

It is painfully obvious, to anyone listening, that the new Monday Night Football play by play guy Joe Tessitore spent countless hours in front of a mirror practicing his, “On MONDAY (pause) NIGHT (pause) FOOTBALL toss to commercial. Had I been his producer I would have insisted instead that he spend some quality time, with both a dictionary and a thesaurus, getting reacquainted with the amazing, wondrous, descriptive, words in the English language. Take “unbelievable” for example. He would learn that for that one adjective there are almost a hundred words that could be used in its place. Astonishing, implausible, improbable, incredible, staggering, awesome, stunning, wonderful, astounding, breathtaking, fantastic, mind-blowing, outrageous, phenomenal, remarkable, spectacular, superb, terrific, freakish, unlikely, and ridiculous are just a few of them. I didn’t even get to phantasmagorical or preposterous.

My point is this: “unbelievable” is a positively horrible word to describe an accomplishment by an athlete. “Unbelievable” to whom? If you’re in a booth or along the sideline, or in the dugout and find yourself tempted to go to the “U” word just stop. If you must then please use the more believable, “I don’t believe it, him, her, that.” Jack Buck did it once to pretty good effect.

“A home run for Gibson! And the Dodgers have won the game 5-4. I don’t believe what I just saw!” That was 1988. A World Series, walk off, home run by a gimpy Kirk Gibson off Dennis Eckersley to keep LA’s world championship hopes alive. It is one of the most remembered, replayed, remarkable descriptions in sports broadcasting. Thank goodness Buck ended with it because the call started out much less memorably, “Gibson… swings and a fly ball to deep right field. This is gonna be a home run, unbelievable! A home run for Gibson.” I like to think, as good a broadcaster as Jack Buck was, he realized in the moment how silly that sounded so he corrected it. A better broadcasting moment came eight years earlier.

“Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” That was Al Michaels calling the USA/USSR hockey game at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. It is one of the five most repeated and remembered calls in history. For my money it rivals, “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant” after Bobby Thompson’s home run to beat the Dodgers, as number one. But can you imagine if Michaels was a lesser broadcaster and the call was something like, “Five seconds left in the game. USA beats the Russians! Unbelievable!” It makes me shudder. As a matter of fact Michaels game analyst that night, former goalie Ken Dryden, did blurt out the seemingly obligatory, completely nonsensical, word “Unbelievable” right after Michaels’s magic. Thank goodness nobody heard or remembers that.

I’m proud to say the announcers I had the pleasure to work with, train, and produce rarely, if ever, use this egregious adjective and on the rare occasion they do (and I’m listening) they hear about it from me. Many of the people who broadcast sports for a living are paid handsomely for the privilege. Wouldn’t it be nice if they made an effort to use their words?

“Words, empty as the wind, are best left unsaid.”

Homer

I watch a ton of sports on television. It used to be my job, it’s always been a passion. Lately it’s a chore. Oh, I still love the sports. I still look forward to the events. But, more often than not, for me the folks charged with providing the play-by-play and analysis make watching the contests less and less enjoyable. I am a firm believer in the statement made by the great Don Ohlmeyer when he said, “nobody tunes in to a sporting event on television because of the man or woman who is announcing” (although I must admit I have turned on random Milwaukee Brewers games to hear my pals Brian Anderson and Bill “Rock” Schroeder). One further review my guess is I would’ve flipped to those games anyway.

I’ve worked with hundreds of announcers, many of them I convinced to become broadcasters and trained. Some have gone on to fabulous careers while others weren’t so fortunate. All of them would be better on the air if they said less. This is a drum I have beaten in this forum before but today’s missive is not so much about the number of words uttered by announcers at ball games and golf tournaments all over the world but the words they choose to utter. As we are so often reminded, in today’s politically correct world, words matter.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, many, if not most, professional announcers and analysts have stopped making sense. Simple ways of describing the most common actions have given way to a word salad bar fit for any of the country’s best buffets and restaurants. For some reason the folks in charge of describing the action to us fans on couches all over America have decided instead to show us they all own a copy of the Sports Phrase Thesaurus. For different reasons, again unbeknownst to me, the producers responsible for providing oversight during these telecasts have allowed this abomination of the English language to occur. Allow me to offer some examples from sports broadcasts I watched some or all of this weekend:

Football

“He put the ball on the ground.” In other, fewer, more exact words, “he fumbled”.

“He can really elevate.” Just say “jump” it’s two fewer syllables.

“he is so good in space” and “he operates in space”. Minimal syllables I’ll admit for but this phraseology makes absolutely no sense.  I am pretty sure the analyst means the player is good at “getting open” and once he’s there, he’s good too. These folks are athletes, not astronauts.

“He has the ability to run downhill”. Does this mean he doesn’t have the ability to run uphill? Does this replace the other worn out phrase, “he knows how to run North and South”? Aren’t college and professional football fields flat?

Baseball (heard every night and almost every inning during this year’s postseason)

“He has to expand the strike zone”. I’m pretty that means the pitcher wants the hitter to swing at balls as well as strikes. So just say that! I mean the strike zone isn’t actually be expanded regardless of what the pitcher wants. And of course conversely:

“The hitter can’t expand the strike zone.” Got it, don’t swing at bad pitches. And as was said of one Los Angeles Dodger batter…

“He can really manipulate the ball”. I’m no genius but I’m going out on a limb to say this particular announcer means the guy can “hit”.

When you talk a lot on television I understand the need to find different ways to same the same thing. But I offer up a better solution (when I say better I mean better for me!). Just. Don’t. Talk. So. Much. There, I said it. It was easy. Sports events on television are at least 3 hours long (counting halftime, game breaks, injury time outs, and, in baseball, endless visits to the pitcher’s mound to discuss strategy and change arms). Some of them are even longer. I used to tell all my announcers, “that means there is more than enough time for everyone on the team to say more than enough words.” But still most, if not all, find it necessary to say something, anything after every play, every shot, every pitch. And for goodness sake stop stating the obvious. It’s a visual medium, we can see what you see. It’s all simply not necessary and, in fact, it is bad television.

If you’re an announcer. If you’re reading this. Please, as a courtesy to the millions of people who watch sports on television… Speak 30% less. And when you do speak, use words and phrases that actually mean what you are trying to say. Here’s another idea: record your work. After you record it actually watch it and then tell me, in all honesty, if you were able to sit through even a half, a quarter, or a few innings, without hitting the mute button.

Follow these simple suggestions and you’ll be a better broadcaster. And a more popular one too. You’re welcome.