While Ravens QB Joe Flacco seethed over the work of replacement referees in yesterday’s loss to the turnover-prone Eagles, the Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik declares, “I had to watch a telecast of it that was almost as incompetent as the officiating.” There’s no shortage of gaffes by Greg Gumbel, Dan Dierdorf and the CBS production team that raised Zurawik’s ire, but chief amongst their offenses was a failure to explain or detail the injury to Baltimore safety Bernard Pollard. “When you get this CBS team, ” rages Zurawik, “you don’t get a sideline reporter, who in a first-rate broadcast should have been all over Pollard’s injury and status.”
Hey, here’s an idea for Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports: Have one of your aides call up a first-rate campus newspaper like the one at Penn State or Towson University, ask for the sports editor and offer her or him $50 and all the pizza they can eat to sit in the production truck and monitor The Sun’s website and social media for some real information on injuries and unexpected developments in the game.
And then, let the student reporter share that information with an associate producer, who can feed it to Dierdorf and Gumbel. It couldn’t be worse than what you have now with this backup crew and no one providing that crucial service.
Yes, I’m being a wise guy, but do you really think CBS Sports can’t afford a sideline reporter — or some systematic way of tracking injuries and informing viewers of the severity and possible impact on the game?