To be clear, no one was murdered at the first-round NIT matchup between the Dayton Flyers and Florida Atlantic Owls on ESPN, even though it may have sounded that way.
Play-by-play announcer Tom Hart and analyst Perry Clark were on the call for Dayton’s 86-79 win over Florida Atlantic Wednesday night on ESPN2. Early in the first half, Clark was boasting about FAU’s guard play off the bench after KyKy Tandy and Niccolo Moretti checked into the game.
But good luck hearing the commentary over a screeching fan who appeared to be doing everything in their power to ruin the broadcast.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. I was listening to that person getting murdered in the third row.” pic.twitter.com/55gI54g1p6
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 20, 2025
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” Hart aptly told Clark. “I was listening to that person getting murdered in the third row.”
Obviously, the screeching fan wasn’t getting murdered in the third row, there would have been a lot more commotion from other people in the seats. But the screeching fan was, however, murdering the ESPN broadcast.
Who enjoys this? The audience at home being begged to hit the mute button doesn’t like it. The person doing the screaming can’t enjoy the fact that they woke up this morning without a voice. And then there are the announcers who are tasked with calling a game over this screeching.
It’s one thing to call a game over a loud and raucous crowd, but having to deal with someone uttering a scream that rivals Lloyd Christmas’s most annoying sound in the world is something no announcer signed up for while calling a basketball game.
