By Ridge Mahoney
Senior Editor
Soccer America
Well, American soccer fans, your sport is growing up. Will you?
Rip and ridicule Brent Musburger if you will, but he's a major player for the Disney broadcast companies, as are Dave O'Brien, Shelly Smith, Dave Revsine and Rece Davis. Some pretty important people at the network, including King of Content John Skipper, have deemed the World Cup worthy of their attention.
No, they're not soccer experts. Those roles are filled by the commentators and in-studio analysts and whether they fill them poorly or perfectly is a matter of opinion, as are the decisions made by executives. That's why said execs are extremely well-paid, at least until they get fired. Which they are. Often.
Musburger has decades of experience, much if it with ABC. Personally, I'd prefer Al Michaels, but he's still way off the soccer radar screen. Besides, he doesn't do studio work, he's an events guy. (More on that later.)
Like it or not, there are millions of people who watched the Women's World Cups and women's Olympic soccer tournaments and that's why Julie Foudy is in the studio. She'll draw viewers because of who she is and that's television, baby. So will Alexi Lalas, who's also got something to say. Most of the time.
Many regular ESPN/ESPN2 announcers have event contracts, which means they are paid to do a certain number of events per year and the network has the final say on what those events are. And OÆBrien freely admits he asked to do the World Cup while negotiating a new contract. After years of doing baseball and basketball for ESPN and ESPN2, he asked for the plum soccer job, and got it.
This wouldn't happen in another sport. Announcers moving into their first NFL job don't demand the Super Bowl.
One view of this power play is soccer is so lightly regarded a rookie can move right into the dream job. Point taken.
A contrasting slant is that the network wants as many high-profile talking heads as it can get to drive ratings and bring as glamorous a sheen as it can to the programming.
Many traditional baseball lovers tear their hair out when Chris Berman's machine-gun verbiage hits at playoff time. Hey, he's a big-timer, and big-timers do the big events, and while O'Brien et al aren't the top dogs at their network they aren't pups, either.
The ascension of OÆBrien is hard luck for JP Dellacamera, but he'll still do a lot of World Cup games, as he should. And any fan who gets all agitated about announcers while all 64 matches of the world's greatest sporting event are being shown live without commercial breaks is way too wound up about secondary matters.
On the other side, there's Robin Fraser. He, too, is a rookie announcer after retiring from the game last year. That's a jump, but for a respected former pro with poise and intelligence, what's to lose? Give the rook a shot.
Just figure that O'Brien and Musburger and Co. will spurt forth a few howlers. It's all part of the show.