Does NBC Dislike the Bears? A Mockery of Sports Broadcasting

(Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)

I don’t know if anyone else feels like this but after having watched the Bears vs. Falcons game on Sunday night television, I get this impression that Chris Collinsworth is not a fan of the Bears at all.  While most commentators are impartial in their coverage of NFL games, Collinsworth has seemed to let some kind of personal dislike that he has for the Bears overtake his commentary in what I consider to be a one sided affair when it comes NBC’s coverage of Bears games. 

Now granted, I am a Bears fan and when the are on the losing end of a game I tend to get a little bit test but even to the most common football fan, the comments and actions made by Collinsworth and the NBC crew about the Bears are completely one sided.

Here is a perfect example of how when the Falcons make a mistake, it’s treated lightly but when the Bears make one, it’s as if the whole world is coming to an end.  When Bear’s quarterback Jay Cutler threw his first interception of the game, it was dissected for at least ten minutes following the mistake.  However, when Falcon’s quarterback Matt Ryan threw his first interception, the play was looked at just one time on replay and that was that.  You didn’t hear about it again.  You didn’t hear about how it could be the end of the Falcon’s hopes of getting a comeback and just how and why Ryan did what he did.  When Cutler did it, his play was cross examined worse than a murder at trial and the broadcast team made it sound like the apocalypse was upon us.

Another comment that was made, by Collinsworth’s cohort Al Michaels was very disturbing.  As Cutler took off on a 30 yard run you may have heard Michaels making the remark “This is Cutler’s best run ever, trust me.”  I don’t know what everyone got out of that but I took it as an insult to Cutler’s running ability.  He has consistently made good runs and critical times and this comment was not warranted.  So there you go, another example of NBC’s dislike of the Bears.

Finally, when you look at the coverage that the crew gives teams during the games, you will find out that they gave much more coverage to the Falcons than they did the Bears.  After seeing that game, I know a lot more about Matt Ryan and how “great” he is.  If I was a general football fan and didn’t know much about either team, I would have thought that the announcers in the booth had wanted the Falcons to win much more than they wanted the Bears to win.

I find it increasingly difficult to watch the NBC broadcasts when things like this happen.  I don’t want to hear how much the announcers think one team is going to win over another.  I want the straight forward play by play and analysis that we had back in the 80’s and 90’s.  I think that the next time the Bears are on Sunday Night Football, I might just turn the sound down on the television and turn on the radio.  I think that it will be much better that way.

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