WARNING! The Worst Announcer In Pro Basketball Has Come For The NFL

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about nice smelling farts, eating 500 gummy bears, amateur stakeouts, and more.

Your letters:

Aaron:

Were you able to enjoy Charlotte Hornets play by play person Eric Collins calling the Panthers game? I was watching RedZone, so every time they cut to Panthers/Dolphins I was equally shocked/delighted to hear his deeee---livery! There's a chance this man enters the Gus Johnson realm of Way Too Much within a year, but maybe he can find the enthusiastic-but-not-corny sweet spot that Kevin Harlan alone occupies. Either way I say give him Tirico's job, effective immediately. 

I can’t ride with you on this, Aaron. If you’ve read Defector over the past few years, you know that the NBA arm of this company long ago identified Eric Collins as the most grating local play-by-play guy in that league, if not the whole of human history. Being primarily a football fan, I rarely had to worry about encountering Collins’s work out in the wild because I’m not a diehard Hornets fan (no one is), and because I foolishly assumed that Collins only plied his trade in basketball.

When I tuned into Red Zone on Sunday, that feeling of comfort was forever shattered, mostly due to the high pitched voice shrieking out of my television:

Not only was Collins the national play-by-play guy for Panthers-Dolphins, but he was paired with Mark Schlereth: the loudest, stupidest asshole to ever do color commentary. Schlereth alone can make any game unbearable, but adding Collins to the mix is a crime that leaves even Bibi Netanyahu outraged. We’ve all had our fun goofing on Gus Johnson for his lack of restraint, but Gus Johnson isn’t gonna lose his shit when a running back goes for two yards on first down. Gus Johnson barely understands the value of modulation, but he has at least heard of the concept.

By contrast, Eric Collins treats every play like he’s the voice-over on a Slim Jim commercial. Every time Bryce Young dropped back in Sunday’s game, Collins would scream, “YOUNG…!!!!” with a three-inch line of slob hanging from his mouth. This wasn’t Josh Allen with the ball in his hands. No one sees Bryce Young drop back and says to themselves, “Something astonishing is about to happen.” Every pass this shrimp completes only serves to postpone his inevitable benching. A good play-by-play announcer can communicate such low stakes simply by minding the volume knob. They match their voice to the action on the field, otherwise the strain becomes glaringly evident. I’m not a huge Mike Tirico fan, but Tirico at least understands that part of the job. I can tolerate watching a Tirico game. And I love Kevin Harlan too because, even when Harlan gets overcaffeinated, he’s got the timbre to make those hype calls amusing.

But Collins and Schlereth rendered Panthers-Dolphins, a game that ended in objectively exciting fashion, unlistenable. We can’t let this man prosper. If Collins ever lands one of the primetime game jobs, it’ll be the worst thing to happen to football fans since Paul Maguire walked the earth. And so to you Aaron, I must beseech you to never praise the ShoutBot. Ever. Even if you’re like, “Oh it was kinda funny when he yelled IT’S A TET OFFENSIVE! for that one Tet McMillan catch,” please check yourself before you wreck yourself. Otherwise Collins will keep moving up the org chart and we’ll end up getting more of his kind, across multiple football games. And once that happens, the world will die. I am not overemphasizing the stakes here.

Daniel:

Are Joe Buck and Troy Aikman now the best booth in football? I feel like you see how good broadcasters truly are during an absolute ass beating, and their call on Broncos/Bengals was like a 13-1 baseball game in the 7th inning—which I mean as a compliment.

I’m a big fan of that booth, even if I know other people aren’t. It’s easily the best booth ESPN has ever used for MNF (Al Michaels and John Madden only did the broadcast when it was on ABC). Buck is the best play-by-play guy across any sport, as evidenced by his mic work on Devin Lloyd’s house call Monday night. I even like Troy Aikman, who the average Defector reader wishes fell off a horse. This is because Aikman largely calls the game as he sees it. If a coach/QB/ref is fucking up, you can hear it in Aikman's tone of voice. You know that Troy knows that Jake Browning is a dogshit player, and that he’s unhappy having to watch it.

That’s refreshing compared to former MNF color guys like Ron Jaworski, who used to pop every disc in his spine trying to sell the audience on Tyler Thigpen as a viable quarterback. The only things I look for in a color guy are a tolerable voice, telling me who committed the penalty before the ref does, and candor (or at least, a version of candor that the NFL finds acceptable). For me, Troy Aikman has enough of those qualities to make him among the more welcome color guys in my life, even when he gets old and cranky on occasion.

But are Joe Buck and Aikman the BEST booth working right now? Reader, they are not. That honor goes to the two gentlemen embedded below:

That’s Joe Davis and Greg Olsen, currently serving as Fox's B-team. You already know that the A-booth is being held hostage by Tom Brady’s existing contract, and you already know how unfair this arrangement is not just to viewers, but to the color guy forced to serve as Brady’s understudy. Greg Olsen is the best analyst in the game right now. It’s not even close. Whenever there’s a big strategic flashpoint in a game, Olsen is right there to explain the situation, and why doing X is the wisest move, both analytically and psychologically. When a team makes the WRONG choice, he hammers them nearly as hard as the internet does.

He also has a genuine rapport with Davis, so much so that I didn’t even mind when Olsen told the audience that he tried his first Guinness the week of the Ireland game and didn’t care much for it. He phrased this opinion delicately, because he knows how seriously people take their beer. But when Mike Tomlin fucked up basically every major decision late in that Dublin game, he didn’t hold back at all. He and Davis also made sure to note that they drank a lot of other beer while abroad. These are men who know their audience.

Olsen’s brand of candor isn’t just refreshing, it’ll also help his analysis remain sound the further he gets away from his playing days. You’ve seen how color guys like Tony Romo tail off as the game changes since their time on the field. When Romo first got to the booth, he displayed an otherworldly ability to diagnose plays before the snap. But then time passed and Romo, who I still like, was left with little to say other than OH GOD JIM THIS COULD GO EITHER WAY! By contrast, Olsen’s work reflects the game as it is now, which helps stave off the onset of boomerism.

The worst color guys (Schlereth) will make your team’s loss feel even worse. They feel like the reason you blew it. But I’ve never blamed any of my team’s losses—and they still lost that game to Pittsburgh, even though idiot Mike Tomlin was dying to give it to them—on Greg Olsen. Because when Olsen works my team’s games, I at least know someone will do a good job that day.

Kevin:

I am not a Football Knower, but something has always bugged me. We're led to believe that NFL coaches eat, breathe, live, and shit football. They are supposed to be generals on the field of battle, that they spend all their free time digesting tape, etc. And yet, every year someone fucks up some kind of obvious timeout or penalty call, and we're all left in disbelief. Are these guys really the best at their jobs? Are the margins so thin at the NFL level that the pressure just gets to everyone?

Yes to both of those things. As difficult as the job is portrayed by the media, it’s 1,000 times harder in real life. John Madden retired from coaching due to burnout when he was 42, seven years younger than I am as of today. In the All Madden retrospective special, Bill Parcells described the stress of the job with a vulnerability that I’d never heard from Parcells before, or since. You can only understand the strain of being a head coach if you’ve been one yourself, which was how Parcells was able to see so clearly into Madden’s thought process.

And that was back when the job of head coach was easy enough that Mike Ditka could win a Super Bowl. The job has only gotten more difficult since then. You have to hire a competent staff. You have to work with the front office to hire the right players. You have to map out, in detail, every training camp, every in-season practice, every road trip, and every gameday. You have to know how to handle the press. You have to know how to handle fan expectations. You have to manage 53 players, all of whom have different responsibilities, different personalities, different abilities, and different motives. You have to deal with the league and its horseshit. Then there’s all of the tedious coach shit on top of that: studying tape, organizing playbooks, installing game plans, and a bunch of other crap I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot clownpole. And even if you do all of those jobs well, you still have to win games, otherwise no one will care. Then you have to put on a macho front like the barbs don’t get to you when they totally do.

Ask Mike McCarthy. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of running an NFL team, McCarthy is a perfectly good coach. But he sucks at late-game management, so none of his other talents matter in the aggregate. Or consider Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh. Both of these men have won titles. Both of them know how to get the fabled “buy-in” from their players so that day-to-day operations run smoothly. But both men have also been in their respective positions for so long that their in-game methods have grown out of date. They’re good coaches, but no fan wants to hear that shit when they haven’t been to the Super Bowl lately. If you suck at any of the million things a head coach must do, they’ll want you replaced with some peppy drone from the Sean McVay factory.

Even Bill Belichick, the most successful coach in league history, couldn’t keep up with the demands of the occupation (and still can’t). That’s not a job that you or I want. That’s a job that would break any us within 10 minutes of accepting it.

HALFTIME!

Ricky:

Do you think you could eat 500 gummy bears in a sitting? Based on the bag I'm grazing, that would mean four pounds total. Seems easy. 

Your eyes are bigger than your tummy, Ricky. Gummy bears are so easy to munch on that you can trick yourself into believing that you could digest an infinite number of them. But think of a four-pound bag of Halloween candy. Think about whether you, as an adult, can eat all of that candy in one sitting without vomiting all over your ghost costume. Now make all of the candy in the bag gummy bears and guess what? You’d still barf, only it’d be more colorful than a pile of used Snickers bars on the rug.

Calories are calories, and the human body can only take in so much of them at a time before it rebels. Lord knows that drunk/stoned me has tried to defy this ironclad rule of biology on many occasions. It never ended with me raising my hands in triumph after downing a plate of 50 eggs. You’re no different. Unless you weigh like 800 pounds or something. Then I have no idea what you’re capable of.

Erik:

Readers may remember me as the guy who sparked the REM debate (they still suck). I was astounded to see that you've admitted to being an EPL fan. If you haven't picked one, may I suggest Tottenham Hotspur? They're essentially the equivalent to the Vikings, usually good enough to keep your interest but always coming up short for the championship. Amazing stadium.

I’m not rabid enough of an EPL fan to have a team. I randomly chose Liverpool for that honor a while back, but it never stuck (soon after I bailed, they would go on to win both the EPL and Champions League titles). Because I wasn’t a big soccer fan growing up, I never had the chance to form the sort of indelible bond with a team that stays with you to the grave. But I don’t mind. I can just flip on an EPL game on any weekend morning and enjoy it without the pressures of fandom driving me nuts. I’ll never pick just one team to follow, certainly not one that mirrors the failings of the NFL team I cheer for. I’m not that stupid.

The gag is that I’m a bit of an indirect Spurs fan because my 16-year-old son loves them. I don’t know why he picked Spurs; I certainly didn’t put him up to it. But that’s his team, to the point where I took him to tour Tottenham’s stadium on a family trip to London a couple of years ago. When we got to wander around the sideline, I promised the boy we’d be back for a real Spurs game sometime. He also wants to go back to Tottenham Stadium as a credentialed sportswriter one day. I have little doubt he’ll get there.

Then Spurs will blow another chance to finish at the top of the table and he’ll tear them a new asshole.

Jackie:

A wizard shows up in your garage and informs you that he is taking away all of your tools, save one hand tool and one power tool of your choosing, which you may keep. Which two tools do you choose? For me it would be my lawn mower and a flat-edged shovel.

First of all, what kind of asshole wizard is this? Manannan? I asked for a wizard, not an evil goblin! Thankfully, virtually every house project I tackle require only a screwdriver (let’s go with a Phillips head) and a cordless drill. So there are my choices. If I need a hammer, I can always just use a rock. Or my dog.

Ryan:

Coffee is inherently a hot beverage, correct?? I get irrationally angry when I go to a coffee place, calmly ask for a black coffee, and then get the inevitable “iced or hot?” I want to go full Sam Jackson and scream MOTHERFUCKER DID I SAY ICED?! I’ll acknowledge I have anger issues if everyone else on the planet acknowledges I am correct. 

Like Ryan, I only take my coffee hot. So I freeze just for a second whenever the cashier asks me if I want mine hot or iced. I just assume that hot is the default option in any instance. But the fact that the cashier needs to ask tells me that a shitload of customers don’t feel the way that Ryan and I do. Some people like the taste of iced coffee better and/or prefer a coffee that they can ingest, in full, as quickly as they possibly can to get the caffeine high. The proliferation of nitro brews, plus energy drinks in general, has conditioned Americans to take in 900mg of caffeine on a daily basis. You will have a nervous breakdown once a month treating your body this way, but America also wants THAT for you.

Back to the coffee thing. I don’t get mad whenever the barista asks me if I want mine iced. The only time I’d be outraged is if they gave me iced coffee without me asking for it. That’s when I’ll go on the warpath.

Barry:

Is there an actor that you once really loved that you now can't stand? For me it's Denzel Washington. Watching Highest 2 Lowest and I'm thinking, why are you all of a sudden so insufferable to me? The obverse is, of course, someone you couldn't stand that now you're on board with! Ethan Hawke!! What are your picks, Drew? 

Ethan Hawke is a good one for the second part. I hated Ethan Hawke for decades. I hated him in Reality Bites (hated the entire movie, actually), hated the idea of Before Sunrise so much that I never watched it (likely a mistake), hated that he cheated on Uma with the nanny, and exulted when he tried his hand at writing a novel that everyone ended up trashing. Now he’s the best thing in otherwise middling projects (Moon Knight), or he’s headlining cool-ass indie movies (First Reformed). I hate how much I appreciate Ethan Hawke now.

(I also used to dislike Brad Pitt for dumb reasons, now I think he’s one of the best actors to ever live.)

But let’s go back to Barry’s Denzel slander. I love Denzel unreservedly. If you watched him singlehandedly justify the existence of Gladiator II, you know of what I speak. I haven’t watched Highest 2 Lowest and probably won’t, because there’s an affectionate Jake from State Farm reference in it. But in general, I’m always confident that Denzel will entertain me even if the rest of the movie won’t.

Samuel L. Jackson is another story. SLJ’s legacy will always be Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction, but in 2025 he’s the theater-trained version of Shaq, signing onto any gig with a decent paycheck attached to it. I’m still fond of Sam, and I know he’s a perfectly nice guy. But he’s now settled into the late (non-Scorsese) De Niro phase where his name on the marquee means that I’m about to see a piece of shit. I avoid him when I can. Capital One doesn’t make that easy.

Shane:

What is your breaking point for your monthly expenses/subscriptions? What on its face is too much? Overlords talk about what a great deal it is as they jack up the price, but HBO Max will never be worth $30 a month in my opinion. This question is also determining if people are of the “It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?” ilk, the kind that wouldn’t blink at $70 a month for Peloton.

(Also I find $20 a month to be a Defector pal a great deal kissy kissy smooch smooch)

Kissy kissy smooch smooch right back at you, Shane. Anyway, I have a nebulous breaking point for subs, especially when it comes to streaming music/TV. Those services are a regular part of my life, so I need them. But those companies raise their prices seemingly every other month now, which makes me prickly enough to sometimes cancel (I often do this with Peacock) or seek out a bundle deal. A few months ago, I saw one such bundle that included HBO Max, Hulu, and Disney+ all for $30 a month. I sprung for it. They raised it to like $33/month not long thereafter. I can still abide that. But if Netflix ever crosses the $50 mark, that’s when I’ll crack.

Geoff:

What is up with Ladd McConkey's helmet? Why does it look so big on him? Giving huge Dark Helmet vibes.

It’s because Ladd McConkey is a little guy. The smaller you are, the more a football helmet will stand out atop your little stickman body.

Dave:

If you and two friends were tasked with tailing a random person and staking out their house, how long do you think you could do it before they caught on? You don’t need to do anything except keep tabs on their whereabouts. Assume you and your partners have the time to do this.

So we’re talking about an innocent person here? Sometimes who would have no reason to think they’re being tailed? I’d like to say that I could tail this person for most of the day without them catching on. The problem is that this is 2025 America, where masked men will seize you for having a five o-clock shadow, internet trolls are gunned down in the open, and professional snitch Bari Weiss heads up an entire news conglomerate. Every American is looking over their shoulder now, even the pricks. That hinders my ability to follow anyone without being detected. I’m also a loud person, so my target would probably hear me munching on a bag of Doritos from 30 feet behind them.

Then again, my target probably has a smartphone, and they’re also probably addicted to it. The average American could miss a nuclear bomb going off a mile away if they’re staring at their phone. So I bet I could stake out a person like that for five years.

Chuck:

If you could make your farts smell like one thing, what would it be? I think I'd go for Fruit Loops, or another cereal.

Fresh baked bread. Pleasant but not overpowering. Grocery stores would hire me to fart in their bakery section all day long. It’d be cool.

Zlatan:

From a purely speculative standpoint, how many times do you think a director watches his or her movie? The initial cut, editing, test screenings, re-edits, premier, etc. That's gotta be at least 10-15? 

Keep counting, amigo. Maybe the Russo Brothers only watch their own movie a handful of times, if at all, during production. But if we’re talking about a director who cares, then it’s a million times. You’re watching dailies, screening initial rough cuts yourself, hanging out in the editing suite 24/7 to fix the rough cut, screening the rough cut for the studio brass, going back to the edit suite to deal with their notes, and then repeating that process 90 times over until final picture is locked. You’re also rewatching the film on your own to make endless tweaks. I had to do this with ads, and ads are pointless. To ensure quality control on a feature-length film, you have to be even more fastidious.

Books work in a similar fashion. I had read each of my own books so many times before publication that, by the time pub day arrived, I was sick to death of the fucking thing. And when I had to self-publish (for Point B), I had to do even more run-throughs. Once the book is pubbed and done with, I never want to look at it again. Even now, when I crack open a book like The Hike just for fun, I read the copy and am like, “Oh god, I remember all this shit. I can go ahead and put this away now.” The life of an artist.

Email of the week!

Pete:

Between classes, just about 34 minutes ago, I watched a student do a HoCo ask, to a girl, in public, and she turned him down. She said no and walked away. He had his fellow football players hold up signs that spelled her name. He's very much distraught, and I told him that it wasn't that bad and that he'll be fine. 

(I'm sure he'll be fine, but it really was bad.) 

Oh man, the sign part makes it excruciating.