SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has had a lot to say over the past week.
Appearing as a guest with Paul Finebaum, Sankey offered critiques of the rival Big Ten, arguing against those that implied that an underlying pro-SEC bias helped the conference.
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But Sankey’s harshest words came for some of those in the broadcast booth. The commissioner took issue with several commentators who criticized the officiating in a few big SEC games the previous weekend.
“I am highly disappointed in announcers and their criticism, and they’re wrong,” Sankey told Finebaum. “Some of the worst officials in America are those in the announce booth. We have officiating experts who I turned on a game on Saturday, who was just flat wrong. And what that creates is this narrative that we’ve done something wrong, and that is unacceptable to me, and we have to address that.”
While Sankey didn’t directly name names while speaking with Finebaum, it was later reported that his comments were largely aimed at former Georgia quarterback and current SEC Network analyst Aaron Murray, who was critical of the officiating in the Missouri-Texas game, as well as ESPN play-by-play man Sean McDonough, who raised questions about the crew calling the Georgia-Ole Miss game.
On Friday, McDonough’s fellow broadcaster Tim Brando took some time out of his interview with Jacksonville sports radio station 1010XL to lay into Sankey for offering input in places where he wasn’t welcome. The conversation began with a discussion around some of the officiating that was questioned in the first place, before Brando directed some of his ire at the SEC commissioner, noting that the broadcasters were only voicing what many people were thinking.
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“What the hell is Greg Sankey throwing ESPN and ABC announcers under the bus for?” Brando asked. “I’ve talked to Sean [McDonough]. He knows about it. And he had [Missouri head coach Eli] Drinkwitz in that game, and Eli obviously had tons of problems with what happened in the Texas game, and Eli told Sean exactly what the issue was.”
Brando theorized that Sankey’s frustrations may be stemming from other issues, and didn’t buy his excuses for the conference not being as transparent with its reviews as others have become this year.
“I’m just going to tell you right now pal, this guy is out of control,” he said of Sankey. “I don’t know if it’s because [Big Ten commissioner Tony] Petitti got his way and he got 24 teams. Plus the fact that Sankey really didn’t want to go to 24, and everyone knows he didn’t [want to go to 24].
“I don’t know what’s bothering Greg, but to say that ‘Oh we want to do it right when we go to the command center.’ Here’s the issue. He knows that the ACC has a command center, Big Ten has a command center, Big 12 has a command center. Now there are times when I’m listening to the command centers when I’m calling a game, and I can get confused because I hear several people talking. But you know what? To the viewer, and even to the broadcaster, I’ve got a better understanding to what they’re thinking before the call is made. So that’s good. That’s transparency.”
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Brando offered that there were plenty of voices more qualified to offer their opinions on a game’s officiating, and essentially told Sankey to stay in his lane.
“And if it’s Pereira or Blandino that come in afterwards, or, he’s got his own guy, his own SEC guy, his own past supervisor on ABC helping with this, and he’s still got a problem with the announcers? Greg, why don’t you just do your job and make sure the fans and the viewers and the networks you’re in business with all get the same access? For some reason the SEC says they’re above all that and they want it to be a clean, crisp broadcast. They don’t want any confusion. Who anointed him the king of broadcasting? Has he won any Emmys? I don’t think so.”
That Sankey is going to defend his conference against its critics is no surprise, but Brando’s retort puts his critiques in a good perspective. Everyone watching a game, from the broadcast team to the halftime announcers to the fans at home and in the stadium has the right to call it like they see it when it comes to how things are being officiated.
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Football is filled with objective and subjective calls, and sometimes they’re going to go your way, and other times they won’t. That’s just how it works. Getting frustrated with the people who point that out is like getting frustrated with football itself.
The post Tim Brando bashes Greg Sankey over broadcaster criticism appeared first on Awful Announcing.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
