Study: Announcers Increasingly Able To Believe What They're Seeing

ITHACA, NY—Over the past five years, sports announcers have displayed a marked increase in their ability to accept the evidence of their eyes and find the sporting efforts they witness “entirely credible,” a study published Wednesday concluded. “In the past, sportscasters were like newborn infants, assuming each running catch or 28-point performance was outside the realm of possibility,” said Cornell University researcher Karen Thaler, who noted that “wow’s” and “oh-my’s” have recently hit all-time lows. “It appears they are now able to contextualize an event within the long and varied history of team sports that came before it. Today’s basketball announcers won’t even say that a jump shot is taken from ’downtown’ unless the player is 40 feet away from the hoop.” When asked to comment on these findings, ESPN’s Dick Vitale replied with a calm and even “that sounds about right.”