Which NFL Announcing Pair Is The Chattiest?

In October, The Wall Street Journal brought to our attention which NFL pregame team had the biggest case of the giggles. Now, the WSJ brings us a study conducted by The Count that exposes the NFL’s most loquacious announcers (chart after the jump):

This analysis, which studied the first 15 minutes of every game from Week 1, showed Mr. [Kevin] Harlan was the most-talkative play-by-play man at 120.9 words-per-minute, while Kenny Albert was the quietest at 55.4. On the color side, Daryl Johnston spoke at a league-leading 99.3 wpm, and Ron Jaworski talked the least at 30.4 (note: he’s part of a three-man booth).

There’s a tendency to assume today’s announcers are more chatty than their predecessors, but that’s not always true. Pat Summerall and John Madden only churned out 118.2 wpm—fewer than any announcer pair today—during Super Bowl XXIV, but Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell and Don Meredith combined for 175.5 in a 1979 game. That would be good for third-most this year. Then there’s Dennis Miller. He only said 15.8 wpm in a Monday Night Football Game in 2000. The problem was, those words accounted for roughly one million syllables.

Opposed to what you might think, chatty isn’t necessarily a bad thing — Kevin Harlan is one of the best in the business, actually. It’s definitely noticeable, but the real wordsmiths can get away with all that chatter and not wind up on some website that’s dedicated to catching the stumbles. Take a look at the chart after the jump and let us know — do you see any correlation between WPM and the good or the bad? Let your deductions be heard in the comments.

Who are football’s chattiest announcers? [Wall-Street Journal]