Ryen Russillo has had enough.
During the broadcast of Colts-Jaguars this weekend from Indianapolis, a frustrating trend on sports television reared its head once again. After the Jaguars challenged a tough third-down catch by Colts receiver Josh Downs, Fox went to commercial break.
When game returned to air, it was 1st and 10 for Indianapolis. Play-by-play announcer Joe Davis hardly had time to say, “somehow the call stands here,” before running back Jonathan Taylor ripped off a touchdown run to make it 17-14 in the Colts’ favor.
The broadcast had missed the entire official review, and the announcement that Downs’ catch stood.
“This is happening all the time on television broadcasts right now,” Russillo said after relaying the story on the latest episode of The Ryen Russillo Show. “I know the rights, I know they went up, because the cap went up. I know the money’s pouring in. But this is happening way too often.”
Russillo was careful to emphasize that while the latest example occurred on Fox, he sees the issue cropping up across all networks he watches — including local games. The Barstool host even said he saw it happen on a Denver-Orlando game in the NBA this past week, when the broadcast went to commercial with the Nuggets in possession of the ball and came back to air as Magic guard Anthony Black was slamming a dunk down.
Russillo joked that in the near future, networks may well start skipping over entire sections of the game to air commercials, then allow announcers to summarize what the audience missed:
“I feel like we’re a couple years away from the announcer coming back like, ‘Alright, third down, couple runs weren’t that exciting, didn’t miss a thing. Third down at the 40.’ I’d like to think there’s a limit that we’re going to be able to put up with.”
Indeed, this fall alone, Awful Announcing has covered instances of missed action during commercials across several sports, including the NFL, college football and golf — all on different networks.
Maybe the ease with which any fan or analyst can access just about every sporting event live these days has led us all to catch more of these mistakes. Or, maybe the growing number of live sporting events means that not every game has the resources and expertise to avoid these mistakes. Most cynically, we could say networks have just gotten less careful about the viewing experience in order to stuff games full of more ads.
Either way, the issue appears to be getting more attention, with Russillo now leading the charge.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.