I thought he did a pretty good job except when they had

him looking down on the sheet of paper to read us a story

about getting into bowling. I liked the fact they actually

did a clip on getting into the sport and joining leagues. Thoughts? 

Gary Thorne is one of my favorite hockey commentators, but he is just not good at bowling. Zero energy, zero enthusiasm. I for one loved Rob Stone's attitude most of the time. Yes he went over the top on occasion, but I'd rather have someone who is genuinely getting excited than someone who sounds like he's reading the phone book.

{rant on}

 

When they did the announcing, you got the information you needed in a way EVERYONE enjoyed.

They did not need to artificially enhance your viewing and listening pleasure. The excitement was in the bowling, not the announcing. Today, many people seem to remove themselves from the actual sport and need some outside force to make them become interested in the game. Personally ever since Stone and Pederson became the announcers, I have watched the bowling show with the sound off maybe 90% of the time. They detracted so much  from the bowling experience, if I had to listen to them, I would rather have had a root canal. As far as energy goes, Stone and Pederson have/had plenty. It's just all negative energy. Pederson tries to do bowling, but I think Stone just makes him want to go all "hollywood".

 

You can see this in the Super-Bowl and many other sports "spectaculars" The actual sporting contest is rarely the object of the viewers' interest. I'd say 80% of the viewers have zero interest in the game itself. It's a event to allow them an excuse to get drunk and party and that's it. Did you know that there are more drunken driver accidents and arrests on Super-Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year??

 

I'm not sure if this is a generational concern or just that we as a people have become so jaded that we need to have our interest forced in one direction or another.

 

{rant off}