Sunday, February 24, 2008

On the Telecast of the Philadelphia Public League Championship

Communications Tech beat Frankford, 77-73 in double overtime, to take the title.

Here are a few observations about the telecast:

1. Play-by-play man Don Tollefson was plum awful. Even if he's getting up there in years, he still talks like either he wants to be the kid in your high school with the hottest car or aging (and, to some, legendary) Philadelphia DJ Jerry Blavat. Enough already. Worse, Tollefson talked too much for a play-by-play announcer, eclipsing veteran color commentator Sonny Hill, who knows Philadelphia basketball inside out and is much more interesting to listen to than Tollefson. Worst, Tollefson was an unmitigated pollyanna, using words such as "awesome" and "outstanding" way too much (he praised everyone remotely involved with the game save the people who ran the concession stands). It was a great game, but we could have done with a lot less Tollefson.

2. Penn's Palestra seemed more than half empty, as though it were Penn playing Dartmouth on a Friday night instead of, drum roll, the Public League title game. What was going on with that?

3. The direction was lacking, or was it the cameramen, who had trouble following the action from end to end, with the result that on occasion you didn't get a view of a play near the basket. Would it have been too much trouble to hire experienced camermen for this game, Fox?

Great game, though. The kids played their hearts out, and it was a shame that someone had to lose.

1 comment:

Temple Football Forever said...

at the same time, kudos to the fans of Archbishop Ryan and North Catholic for filling the Palestra the next night for the PCL title game. Ryan, a relatively young school (first graduating class 1969) had about 2/3s of the Palestra filled. Crowd was about 8,000, according to the DN but I didn't see any empty seats.