re: Hawthorne, time to ride off into the sunset.

Hawthorne does screw up sometimes and it's usually pretty entertaining, but I don't think errors that he quickly corrects are ruining the game for me. Also, it is pretty hard to see angles & judge distance from the press box. They don't have the benefit of the close-up camera like we do watching on tv.

I felt he did pretty well on one of the most confusing ends to a game that I can remember - LSU vs Tennessee 2010 (football). While the tv guys were showing the final score and talking about the bad snap for a solid minute & a half before the ref made announcement and alerted them to the flag, Hawthorne had been talking about it the whole time & even guessed the right penalty "too many men on the field." I personally know of many people who turned off their tv & never saw the end of the game, but if you had had the radio on you would have known something was still going down.

It doesn't completely excuse some of his more egregious errors but it's something. And I do love the emotion in his voice - whether good or bad - because it totally reflects OUR emotions & connects the announcers to the fanbase.

Hawthorne call of LSU vs Tennessee

What a total cluster frick by Miles that was. Miles admitted after the game that he expected Jefferson to score from the two. I was at the game, on the West side and watched the utter confusion on the sideline after that first play. That was worse than high school sideline control. The subs didn't even leave the sideline until about 8-9 seconds of real time had elapsed.