While reading up on our favorite new controversy – England’s sexist broadcast team debacle – we stumbled across a gem in the Guardian. The following comes from a story about how soccer commentators across the pond struggle to say anything intelligent.
In American sport the talking heads who fill the gaps between games are emboldened by their masters to be provocative as well as highly detailed in their technical analysis. The result is entertainment plus enlightenment (plus earache, sometimes). Here, in football, there is no ante-room between the end of a playing career and the start of a life in broadcasting, which is television’s fault.
We are laughing!
And then there’s someone defending Andy Gray and Richard Keys.The Telegraph‘s Brendan O’Neill thinks
What people forget is that the world of football, particularly the football ground, is one of the few remaining places where people can let rip. In our sedated world of speedily spreading middle-class manners, the stadium remains a place where you can allow passion to override reason and stand up and yell out things you would never normally say in public. So what? It’s fun and it is harmless. Having already claimed the heads of Gray and Keys, let’s not allow the NuFootball no-joys to kill the spirit of football too. We don’t need a Kick Sexism Out Of Football Campaign – we need a Kick Sanctimonious Moralists Out Of Football campaign.
Yeah, we really can’t agree with that logic.