Do they have to do a tonne of research on each player before the game and how do they recognise players from lesser known nations?
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Often they meet the players before the games. It’s easier to remember somebody’s name if you have had several conversations with them. And a lot of times, the same commentators cover the same teams. Even still, they have cheat sheets. They also know which player is in which position, which helps a lot.
Take Division 1 college football. Each team can have 85 scholarship players. Let’s say you have commentators who normally broadcast games from the Southeastern Conference, which has 14 teams. 14 teams x 85 players per team equals over a thousand names. That’s a lot.
But, the commentator knows that right now, Auburn and Georgia are playing. So that cuts it down quite a bit. They also know that one team is on offense, and the other is on defense. So you don’t need to worry about the name of Auburn’s wide receivers when their team’s defense is on the field. Plus, they talk to the coaches before the game, and the coach often tells the commentators if he’s got any trick plays up his sleeve. So if the commentator sees #87 walk out onto the field with #32, he knows something special might happen.
A really good college football team might have 3 or 4 big stars on offense, and maybe 3 or 4 on defense. So the commentator will definitely know their names (#6 is quarterback Don Stevens, #20 is runningback Carl Johnson, etc). And if you see somebody in that position who *isn’t* wearing that number, then you know they switched him out for somebody else and you check the cheat sheet.
There are plenty of players on the team who the commentator doesn’t know. If a bunch of injuries happen and the third string linebacker ends up on the field, the commentator isn’t going to just rattle his name off from memory. But they’ve got a staff passing them notes and whispering in their ear, saying “that’s Doug Smith, a sophomore from Dry Creek, Nevada.” And commentators are good at just keeping the flow going so you don’t even notice.
Passion. I had two friends who would get together and talk about (western) football and the conversation was literally bombarding each other with names and stats of players across the entire NFL and CFL to determine who was better, who was most likely to be awesome, etc.
They were both just really passionate about the topic. They read the newspaper for sports stats every day. It’s not work if you love to do it, and sportscasters pretty much have to love their job or they don’t get very far.
As others have responded, it’s a combination of research and prep and creating a cheat sheet for themselves to reference during the game.
Joe Buck (NFL commentator) tweeted out a sample of his [cheat sheet](https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/joe-buck-nfc-championship-note-sheet-packers-49ers-01dyzgf4pzce) for a game. My understanding is that he creates the printed sheet himself and then, in this example, he’s made further notes and adjustments.
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I used to sit up in the press box for University of South Alabama football games. Here’s how it worked there.
First for print media:
Every seat has a preprinted stats booklet—something like 30 pages of stats, trivia, etc. on each team. Last time each team returned a KO for a TD, last time the team returned 2 KOs for TDs, player with most interceptions in a game, player with most interceptions in a season, etc. etc. After each play, someone would announce over the speaker who the key players were (who carried the ball, who tackled, etc.). The reporters and scouts would write things down, and sometimes, if the announcer got it wrong, someone would yell out a correction.
Now we were right next to the TV, and there was just glass between us and them, so I could watch what they were doing. You just see 2 guys, but there are loads more guys in the booth with them. They will have player rosters in front of them, and spotters will point to players on the rosters who did something. For instance, the announcer might be saying “And Kennedy takes it down the sideline and pushed out of bounds by…” Before he even gets to “by” some guy is pointing to the defender on the roster, and the commentator only has to look at where he’s pointing. “…and pushed out of bounds by Foster.” I noticed a lot of the time the commentators didn’t look at the sheets that the spotters were pointing to, since they could tell based on position and their own prior research who was who without needing binoculars and the help of the spotter. The commentators really did appear to know their stuff. I am told they would spend the entire week prior reviewing game tape and getting to know all the players and formations and tendencies of each side.
They have media guides as well as a “cheat sheet”. It’s easy for teams to distribute sheets that have player numbers, names, etc to the media before a game.
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