TV Announcers Put On a Show
They wired Mia Hamm for sound on Saturday. Unfortunately, they did the same for Ty Keough.
OK, so that’s a bit of a cheap shot, but there is only so much dull even the hardiest of television soccer viewers can stand. Cheerleading is bad enough, but claptrap is worse.
Fortunately, help is on the way.
The most encouraging news to emerge from the Major League Soccer and Women’s United Soccer Assn. season openers this weekend had to do not with those on the field but with those behind the microphone.
For WUSA, Hamm, Anson Dorrance, Julie Foudy, Carin Jennings Gabarra and Carla Overbeck stole the show -- and only Hamm was playing.
For MLS, it was Eric Wynalda and John Harkes, two war horses from the 1990s, who captured the eye and the ear. And both were in suits, not boots.
First, Hamm.
The experiment to hook her up with sound during the Washington Freedom’s game against the Carolina Courage -- a rematch of last season’s WUSA final -- was pretty much a failure. It always was going to be more of public-relations gimmick than a real attempt to get any insight from the world’s top goal scorer during the frenzy of a game itself.
In any case, Hamm always has been much better when her feet do the talking, and Saturday was no exception. She curled in a 20-yard shot to give the Freedom a 2-1 victory and at least a measure of revenge for last season’s title-game loss.
Afterward, she was honest enough to admit that she was attempting to cross the ball, not shoot it, when it found the upper far side corner of the net.
Dorrance, who looks not a day older than when he coached the United States to its first world championship at the Women’s World Cup in China in 1991, was analyzing the game for ESPN in his usual peerless fashion, and remarked that Hamm, a 19-year-old starter on that team, had not aged either.
“She’s been setting standards her whole life,” he told ESPN play-by-play announcer Beth Mowins. “Is she ever going to slow down? Evidently not. This girl can still play.”
A game with just enough incident to hold the viewer was enlivened by sideline interviews conducted by Wendy Gebauer Paladino, a member of the U.S. team in 1991, with two of her former U.S. teammates, Overbeck and Gabarra.
Overbeck, the former U.S. captain now retired from international play, recently gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Carson, but said she will be back playing for the Courage in a couple of weeks.
Gabarra, whose husband, Jim, coaches the Freedom, is the women’s coach at the Naval Academy and it was strange to hear Dorrance feeling the need to explain to viewers just what she had achieved as a player. Has it really been that long ago that she was the most valuable player at China ‘91?
The star of ESPN’s broadcast, however, was Foudy, who appeared in a halftime commercial promoting the eight-team league as WUSA launched its third season.
Foudy is exactly what has been lacking in MLS, a player of the absolute highest caliber who has achieved every possible success on the field and yet still has the enthusiasm, personality and telegenic qualities to be an ideal spokesperson for the sport.
Gebauer, along with former goalkeeper Amy Allmann, also from the 1991 team, have led the way into television for American female players, but WUSA will reap even greater viewing numbers once effervescent personalities such as Foudy, Brandi Chastain and Tiffeny Milbrett get behind the microphone.
As for MLS, it finally has reached that point.
Wynalda, outspoken, feisty and opinionated but with the soccer credentials to back up his views, will be a sideline reporter for ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 this season.
That is a huge plus for the league, even if some of its officials don’t always agree with what he says. As long as Wynalda is given free rein to say what he thinks -- at least up to a point -- viewers will tune in.
Keough, ABC’s analyst Saturday along with play-by-play man J.P. Delacamera, never has been comfortable as a critic. Or even as a neutral observer, for that matter. Objectivity went straight out the window when he and former 2002 World Cup broadcast partner Jack “Homer” Edwards were covering U.S. matches last summer.
Shrill, shrill, shrill. Volume control got a workout.
The arrival of Wynalda on the scene can only help give MLS broadcasts some journalistic integrity. And there was more good news to come.
On Saturday, during the MLS opener between the Galaxy and the Crew at Columbus, Ohio, Wynalda introduced the newest former player to step behind the microphone: former U.S. national team captain John Harkes, who last week announced his retirement as a player.
“I gotta know, man, what are you gonna do now?” Wynalda asked Harkes on the air.
“I’m actually going to be working with Fox Sports World, doing the MLS Wrap highlights show, based in L.A.,” Harkes replied -- no doubt to ABC’s delight since he was plugging an opposing network. “I’m looking forward to that, I’m very excited about it.”
“We changed our shorts for suits and we’re freezing,” Wynalda said at 41-degree Crew Stadium.
Things soon will heat up even more because of last week’s retirement of Marcelo Balboa, a veteran of the 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cups who is headed for the broadcast booth. In his case, it will be as a color analyst on MLS games for HDNet, Mark Cuban’s high-definition television network.
Balboa already has made a quote-worthy comment even before getting on the air. At his introduction by the network last week, he had an interesting confession to make.
“For a player, sometimes it’s difficult to transition over to the other side,” Balboa said. “As athletes, we never like the media, and now I’m becoming a part of it.”
Now that’s more like it. Alexi Lalas, the trailblazer for honesty and forthrightness behind the soccer microphone during his one-year “retirement,” would be proud.
Forget “Monday Night Football.” If MLS can package Wynalda, Harkes, Balboa and, eventually, Lalas, Saturday Night Soccer could be the show of the future.
