Criticizing the broadcasters: Diet Coker & boiled frogs
We like to spread the love around during the weekly “Criticizing the Broadcasters,” but we had just one choice with the SEC Championship Game as the only league game telecast last weekend.
But if we only get one pair of announcers to criticize, we’re glad it is you, Gary and Verne.
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Veteran play-by-play man Verne Lundquist and his color commentating partner Gary Danielson were on the call for CBS during Saturday’s game between Alabama and Florida.
There were so many things to cover in this one, so let’s get right into it.
Cow burps?
Not unlike any other football broadcast you may watch, the starting lineups are displayed on the screen at some point during the first moments of the game.
CBS does so with a Chick-fil-A advertisement that includes a cow tapping the screen with an “eat mor chikin” sign and mooing.
Verne has seen this graphic a hundred times if he’s seen it once, but his comment on Saturday was an odd one:
"You always want to give the cow time to burp." – Verne Lundquist
— Doug Kern (@dakern74) December 5, 2015
"Give the cow time to burp."-Verne Lundquist. Pretty sure that sound is called a moo my friend.
— Billy Stone (@BillyStone62) December 5, 2015
Well, he did it. Verne Lundquist just mistook the sound of a cow mooing as burping.
— Sean Kilpatrick (@SeanKilpatrick1) December 5, 2015
Diet Coker?
This one is on Gary.
He praised Alabama QB Jake Coker for most of the evening. But things got a little weird when he started trying to make puns about the size of the Crimson Tide quarterback.
"No diet Coker there.. That's a big Coker…" Classic Gary Danielson quote What does that even mean?!?!
— Logan Denson (@JLD_54) December 6, 2015
Gary Danielson really likes how big Jake Coker is. He's only mentioned it about 69 times tonight.
— Taylor Galvin (@TaylorTgalvin70) December 6, 2015
Which, of course, led Verne to mention that he probably shouldn’t have been talking about Coke anyway:
#SECChampionship…haha…Gary Danielson mentions Diet Coke during a Dr.Pepper sponsored event
— Harry (@tylivia) December 6, 2015
Movie mix up
Danielson really didn’t have his best day.
At one point he was referring to a movie he thought was called “Runaway Train”, but it was actually called “Unstoppable.”
It wouldn’t have been a huge deal if he hadn’t kept referring to it, and of course Twitter wasn’t going to let that slide:
Gary Danielson also just adamantly referred to Runaway Train as a Denzel Washington movie. No dude, its Unstoppable.
— Robbie Lockamyeir (@rlocks24) December 6, 2015
No idea Denzel had a movie called "Runaway Train" about a train loaded with nuclear explosives. Gary Danielson is awful. #SECChampionship
— Josh Phillips (@JTPhilly) December 6, 2015
Hey @CBSSports please tell Gary Danielson that Runaway Train is an 80s movie w/ Jon Voight & Eric Roberts. Unstoppable is the Denzel movie.
— John Steven Rocha (@TheRochaSays) December 6, 2015
Gary Danielson…two things 1. "Runaway Train" is not the name of Denzel's movie ("Unstoppable") 2. Dude. Spoiler alert?
— Dexter St. Jacques (@dcmadness202) December 6, 2015
Gary Boils Frogs
I’m really having a hard time even explaining this one.
Things got really weird at times with Danielson on Saturday, and this may have been the strangest moment.
In an effort to describe how Alabama wins games, he used an analogy about boiling frogs alive by slowly raising the temperature on them so that they don’t even realize what’s happening.
Presumably, it’s a humane way to kill dinner for a frog meat connoisseur?
At any rate, this was like the gift Twitter had been waiting for all weekend:
Gary Danielson: Frog-torture enthusiast.
— David Wilson (@DBWilson2) December 5, 2015
Gary Danielson with the creepiest analogy.
— Matt Porter (@mattyports) December 5, 2015
Gary Danielson…i wish you were a frog so you could get boiled alive.
— DJ Roman (@DJROM66) December 5, 2015
Gary Danielson with the…disturbing… description of Alabama’s style of play
— Mike Adkins (@Mike_Adkins5) December 5, 2015
Someone needs to call PETA on Gary Danielson.
— The Winter Skipper (@gatorsax2010) December 5, 2015