Al Michaels to me is that old-school guy I like partly because I've listened to him for decades and he's the voice of football ... although I do love when he mentions gambling stuff.
Don't hate NBC's PL crew the few times I've seen them although I rarely see them so can't be sure.
It's all about variety. We don't all like the same kind of comedy but there is lots and lots of choice out there. With announcers (especially in the US -- in the UK you can switch the announcers sometimes) there is no variety. They are all cut from the same cloth (either traditional broadcaster who knows the mechanics of announcing but might not know or even like the sport) or ex-player/coach.
The "broadcaster" and "player" are both hopelessly unable to do anything beyond reporting the facts (and even that is beyond them a large percentage of the time) and the coaches almost ALWAYS start off great and then get network note'd to death. Gruden, Billick ... almost all the coaches were WAY better early and got worse and worse as they went on. You can tell now by how often Gruden resorts to his clichés ... the suits must have said they liked that stuff.
I get that the average fan might not want to hear in-depth real tactics and analytics etc. but in 2015 is it so hard to give us that option at least some of the time?
I get that the average fan might not want to hear someone be funny or interesting in some way (apparently) but give us one or two of those guys. Jock humour is not a substitute for actual humour. I actually watched the pre-game show when Kimmel was on.
