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?
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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.”
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