Prejudiced Commentators Have The Blues

Before you get all revved up here and ready to argue politics with ole Grumpy, sorry to disappoint you but this about something completely different.  This blog is in regard to sports, not political commentators, sorry about that.  So, I am a casual hockey fan, by that I mean I am not a regular follower of the sport.  However, at playoff time I like to watch some of the games as they get pretty intense (same thing with college basketball’s NCAA Tournament).  I don’t really have a team per se, so I really don’t get too emotionally involved in this.

However, I did discover something very interesting, some commentators are very partial to one team over the other.  Now, I had always believed that sports announcers on the major networks were supposed to be impartial.  Announcers on a city or regional stations are of course partial as it usually is their city represented in a game or match.  But the major networks such as NBC Sports (who is the subject of this discussion) should surely be unbiased as they broadcast every team per year nationally.  Since they broadcast nationally and a different team every week then there should be no bias.  I thought it was a written rule—maybe not.

Let me also point out that when you are watching any programming or streaming media, you are the customer.  Whether it is advertised/sponsored media or premium (fee paid) media, you are the customer because you are either paying for the service or enduring the painful, seeming endless parade of ads.  So, you are well within your right to demand a quality product.  This is true of any programming, movies news or other types of programs if I turn something on the TV, I expect to be entertained and good quality.

So, now that I have defined this, I turned on a playoff game between the St. Louis Blues and the Dallas Stars.  This was game seven of their playoff series and had the potential to be a barnburner.  The game lived up to its potential going two over-time periods before being decided on a goal by the Blues.  It certainly proved my theory of playoff hockey being fun to watch.  I almost felt as tired as those players had to be as they played a full game and a half, not to mention that their season seems to go on forever.

From the beginning of this game until the end it seemed as though both announcers were Dallas Stars fans, as they spent more than two-thirds of the contest talking about them.  It was as if the Blues were just kind of there for the sake of being on TV.  At one point in the game (to be specific, the 3^rd period for those of you who watched the game) the Blues were having target practice at the expense of the Stars goaltender (Ironically a St. Louis native) and his teammates were almost a no-show.

Yet, if you were listening to the play-by-play guys, when Dallas Stars player suddenly touched the puck during this Blues onslaught, it was noted as if it was one of the plays of the game.  Throughout that whole barrage of shots, they did recognize the goalie (rightfully so) but also how great the Dallas Stars defense was in preventing a goal.  Really?  Most of the game was spent in the Stars defensive zone, I’m no expert here but wouldn’t that indicate that the St. Louis Blues had outplayed them?

The play-by-play announcers were not the only biased ones on the broadcast, during each of the four intermissions of the game there were 3 “expert analysts” who did nothing but praise the Dallas Stars.  I guess the Blues were not good enough to be in this series, maybe someone miscounted their goal totals (you know, the new math) or the Russian trolls colluded with the referees on the Blues behalf.  Robert Mueller will be appointed to investigate this to determine if indictments should be handed out, the Orange POTUS says, “it’s a witch-hunt!”

I was embarrassed for these guys, no matter what facet of the game they were talking about it always concluded with the question of which Dallas Stars player would step up and be the hero.  As it turns out, it was none of them.  In all fairness here, the Dallas goaltender, a man by the name of Ben Bishop was spectacular in goal, this is a fact.  The St. Louis Blues were relentless, seemingly on the attack throughout the whole game and completely dominated play.   But all throughout the contest the NBC Sports guys could only name a Stars player as the player that they were watching to step it up.

Maybe it is because St. Louis is a midwestern, fly-over city or as it once was referred to as a “cow-town” during a baseball playoff series in the 1990s.  Obviously, the city and its people are not respected by these New York snob announcers.  The St. Louis Blues customers should be furious with NBC Sports, I know I am.   I would love to see the St. Louis Blues win the Stanley Cup, then listen to these biased talking heads tell us how the other teams just didn’t play well.

Talk to Ya Later

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