Totally agree with this assessment. Crazy has real, professional broadcasting chops. What puts him in a select group is that he combines the playXplay role with the color role with great aplomb. Not too many TV heads can handle that. I think our sport is lucky to have someone like Crazy on the mic. I also think Terry Miller & Dixon are great too. Finding talented people to broadcast disc golf action is not one of our problems. Job done.
Disc golf broadcasting problems manifest when the broadcasting talent works exclusively from the course. There's a reason why Jim Nantz & Mike Tirico call ball golf tournaments from a fixed location in a tower two stories above the 18th green or from an ad hoc studio somewhere away from the action - they don't have to worry about bothering the players.
What exactly are Crazy's "professional broadcasting chops"? I mean, outside of his work with DGP and Emerging Sports? I honestly don't know his background in the industry, but to listen to him, "professional broadcaster" isn't what comes to mind. He's a touch better on the Emerging Sports TV show where pretty much everything he says is scripted and edited. But extemporaneously on a live broadcast, he's not professional by any stretch. Funny, entertaining, amusing...maybe if that's your cup of tea, but any random high school football radio announcer has more broadcasting "chops" than Crazy.
And it should be pointed out that DGP has done the "broadcast tower" thing many many many times, probably more often than they have utilized the on-course pXp style. In fact, it used to be the only times they used the on-course announcer were when it was Terry Miller instead of Crazy on the mic. The biggest complaint when they did the broadcasts that way, from a viewer perspective, is that they were 100% disconnected from the action on the course. They were basically watching the same feed we were with about the same amount of information. They rarely knew the score, rarely knew even what other groups were doing.
When Jim Nantz calls a ball golf tournament from a booth away from the action, he's got a producer in his ear feeding him info, and dozens of spotters on the course to keep everyone up to date on what is going on. And that's in addition to the on-course commentators who chime in from time to time. They've literally got a couple hundred people putting that broadcast on the air while DGP seems to have maybe a half-dozen folks at best.
If players are noticing Crazy, he's doing a bad job. Period. He should be virtually invisible during play. Yes, he needs to talk into the mic but he has to do it in a way that is the least obtrusive. If that means whispering the whole time, then so be it. Frankly, aside from the bad jokes and incoherent ramblings, the biggest issue I had with Crazy all week was his volume. He'd go from whispering to shouting in a millisecond...a pain in the ass if you've got the volume up to catch the whispered stuff and he blows your eardrums out shouting about McBeth sticking a 20 footer like it was out of nowhere.
I've long been a supporter and defender of DGP, but I've always found Crazy to be the weak link. If he's bothering the players as much as Paige indicated, he's got to go.