There’s the announcer jinx, where an announcer talks about some streak that promptly then gets broken, and the reverse announcer jinx, where the announcer talks about something that could happen and then it promptly does. But ESPN’s coverage of the North Carolina Tar Heels-Florida State Seminoles men’s college basketball game Monday night saw a funny third option, where an announcer’s observations led to a camera shot that completely went against what they’d just said.
It was Dave O’Brien and Cory Alexander on the call for ESPN in this one, and it was play-by-play voice O’Brien who had the remark in question here. In the final minute, with North Carolina up by 10 and the game well in hand, O’Brien talked about how he’d noticed Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton smiling much more than he’d often seen.
That might well be true. Hamilton has been the Seminoles’ head coach for 23 seasons, and has had ups and downs there, from making the Elite Eight in 1993 and 2018 to not making the NCAA Tournament the past three seasons. And Hamilton in particular has long been known for taciturn in-game expressions rather than overwhelming joy, so it certainly is interesting if he has been smiling more than normal.
And O’Brien, who has been a key part of ESPN college basketball coverage for more than two decades, definitely has the background to know if Hamilton’s behavior has indeed been different. But, this got hilariously undercut by the broadcast switching to camera shot of Hamilton, who understandably was not smiling with his team down 10 in the final minute, instead providing his more-often-seen deadpan expression:
— No Context College Basketball (@ContextFreeCBB) February 25, 2025
“One other thought about Leonard Hamilton. He is smiling more than I’ve ever seen him smile. Because in basketball season, it’s all business for Leonard and every other head coach. But he’s smiled a lot.”
This is amusing as an example of how two things that make sense in isolation don’t work well together. It absolutely makes sense for announcers to talk about their perceptions of coaches and how those coaches have changed. That’s especially true in a last minute like this where the game’s long-since decided, and especially when it’s an announcer with O’Brien’s level of experience around the game in general and this coach in particular. And whether coaches smile or not has come up before, and this was much more reasonable than some treatments thereof.
It also makes complete sense in general for a broadcast to go to a camera shot of a coach when an announcer is talking about them. Sometimes the coach shots work even when that isn’t the case, as was illustrated to great effect with ESPN’s stellar shot of LSU coach Kim Mulkey’s reaction to an easy Kentucky basket Saturday. But this particular shot undercut O’Brien’s point as well as a medieval miner. And it made for a very funny clip.
