What tools do play-by-play sports announcers have to help them identify players on the field when it’s sometimes so hard to see even on a giant screen?
In: 5
most announcers know the guys on the team really well, they’re coworkers so they see them every day both up close and from far away so they just kind of know what they look like, how they move and walk around. plus you can go by what position they play, their body type, their jersey numbers, etc.
Knowledge.
Sports announcers get their gigs because they combine a clear broadcast quality voice with the mental agility to follow action and translate it into coherent verbal imagery, *and* also have an encyclopedic knowledge of the teams’ players’ names and jersey numbers which they can intuitively access in real-time.
Human competence rules.
Edit: play-by-play announcers are usually positioned where they can see the entire field/arena/rink/court, and close enough to pick our jersey numbers.
Well, announcers for football and basketball, and some nationally televised hockey games don’t know the teams as well as say, baseball anouncers do their team. So they have a comprehensive list of players, by jersey number, with a phonetically spelled name. And another stack of papers with the players bio and facts on them. They also spend the week talking with the teams, doing interviews with Key players and coaches. It’s their full time job! As far as how they see the players and recognize them, it’s the numbers on their jerseys, just like you or I would. That and they have a team of lookouts, directors and fact checkers correcting and prompting them in their ear peices. With that said, they still sometimes make a mistake.
They have pages of info and they have staff to spot. Some of the announcers will occasionally credit their spotting team. Those staff have binoculars that are sometimes used as well. I got to go to work with my Dad when I was a kid. He worked For ABC TV here in the USA. There are multiple people on the crew and they have a separate audio channel to talk to the announcers on. Also, for some games, there are internal monitors for the crew to display info for the announcers.
They have a list with all the players on it, with that player’s jersey number beside the name. Plus they talk to the coaches and players in the week leading up to the game, so they know those guys.
They are also usually former players themselves, so they know the rules of the game and how it works. If a football player makes a huge catch late in the game, even if they can’t see the number on his jersey, they aren’t going to accidentally call him the backup QB’s name. They know which guys are out there who might be catching the ball.
Plus, coaches will frequently give the announcers a hint if they’ve got a special trick play in the works. An announcer who blabs to the other team won’t keep his job. So coaches will tell them things like “we’d like to run this trick play where we fake it to Richards, but then we throw it to Johnson. We’ve been practicing it all week. Look for it.” So then if the announcer sees that trick play developing, he knows it’s supposed to go to Johnson. They told him about it.
Think of it like this. A college football team may have 100 players on it. Two teams, that’s 200 kids. That’s a lot. But half of them are third string backups who are extremely unlikely to get any playing time, and if they do it’s because several guys in front of them got hurt. And the announcer has a list right there with the player numbers on it. So if he’s thinking “who the hell is #86?” all he has to do is look at the list. Then they’ll have a little card or something with some info about him. “Coming in for the injured Sanchez is… Freshman talent Tyrone McCallister. You know Dave they’re really pumped about this kid. In spring training he ran the third fastest time on the whole team.”
But normally? They’ve got 11 starters, plus 3 or 4 others who will probably get a lot of playing time. And there are some backups who get significant playing time, but most of them aren’t making big plays. So if somebody does make a big play, it’s probably one of like 20 people. So 20 guys on offense, 20 on defense, for each team. Could you keep the names of 80 guys straight, if you had a list of their names and a week to prepare, and the coach told you ahead of time if he was gonna do something tricky?
Also remember that the players look different. Some kids are tall, some are shorter. A team might have one white wide receiver. You see a white kid make a catch? Pretty safe that it’s Tanner Mitchell, and not DeMarquius Washington. And you know how the game is played, so if one team is on offense, throwing the ball, you probably aren’t going to need to worry about any of their defensive players out there.
Instead of having to memorize 200 different names, on any given play you’re only having to distinguish between like 4 or 5 people.
Plus it can be a lot easier to follow the game when you are seeing it live, when you can see the whole field, as opposed to on TV where the camera cuts to a bunch of different angles. On TV you’re at the mercy of whether the camera man zoomed in at the right time. Announcers can see the TV feed and they can see it live.
And then, of course, sometimes announcers get it wrong. But they’ve got people behind the scenes checking everything, and usually they’ll issue a correction. “Actually that wasn’t Davidson. It looked like it from up here, but that was actually Marquez Joseph on the tackle.”
Let’s take an announcer from, say, a European soccer league – which one would say is the hardest to memorize players names because there are tons of them that all play international and domestic leagues as well as the frequent acquisition and selling/trading/loaning of players.
For one, if it’s your day job to talk about sports, watch sports, interview coaches and players; you start to remember who they are very quickly. I had only been watching MLS for about two years and I basically know the names and faces and numbers of the starting roster of my team as well as the subs and some of the rotation players. And that’s from just watching the games. Commentators are connected to every facet of the game and are literally paid to study and know it, and were usually former players themselves and can offer the quality insight fans crave. No player comes out of nowhere. For soccer, one can be bombarded by news of youth academy rising stars, transfer and injury news, etc. Players are usually a known quantity by the time they step on the field. Here in the states, we have local high school games broadcasts, college, and professional coverage. So again, it’s not like these guys come from nowhere. Their careers are followed the entirety of the time, basically. You’ll know players names, jersey number, position, and even their faces if you watch them continuously – which is what they do because it’s their job. They also have rosters, starting lineup information, and I’m willing to bet they study a bit before a broadcast.
Even then, more focus is on the bigger stars. I couldn’t tell you the name of a single NFL lineman, but we all know the names of good quarterbacks, running backs, center backs, wide receivers, half backs, etc. Basketball is a bit easier since there’s only 10 people playing at a time. Hockey is the real headache as they sub in and out so quickly and the game is so fast paced, but again. If it’s your literal occupation to watch and talk sports, you’re going to pick up on it much easier than you or I would, as I only really watch when my team plays (except the world cup. I’ll watch every match I can)
In Formula One (auto racing), there are ten teams, each with two cars painted the same way. So the problem becomes telling which car is which for any given team.
At the very top of a Formula One car, above the air intake, there is an assembly, called the T-bar, which houses a couple of cameras to provide an onboard view.
For each team, one car will have a black T-bar, and the other car will have bright yellow patches all over the T-bar. This is how you can tell which driver is which in a team. Typically the “primary“ driver in a team will have a black T-bar, and the other driver will have all the yellow patches on their T-bar.
Latest Answers