The Cardinal Sports Broadcasting Sin..

Kansas won the college basketball championship in OT. But the play on the court is not the story. Instead, the story was what was heard on the radio.

Doing play-by-play of a game is hard enough. Throw in the fact that it's down to the last 10 seconds of a national championship and the play-by-play has his work cut out for him. Last night, the broadcaster doing the game for WestwoodOne was counting down the last frantic 10 seconds, including when Kansas' Mario Chalmers drained the game tying jumper wih 2.1 seconds left... Before the play-by-play called it, the radio audience heard analyst John Thompson say "good" before the broadcaster informed his audience. Killer. Thompson stepped all over the call of the play. So we got the outcome before the radio call. Memo to John Thompson: Shut up! (Is it just me or does John Thompson sound like the AllState Insurance guy?)

Granted, sports broadcasting is filled with analysts stepping over good play-by-play calls. Here's but a few:

1980 Winter Olympics: Color commentary analyst Ken Dryden yelping "it's over" right before Al Michaels' now famous "Do you believe in Miracles?" call.

Super Bowl XXXVIII--As Adam Vinitieri's game-winning kick sails through the uprights to give the Patriots a Super Bowl Victory, color analyst Boomer Esiason steps all over Marv Albert's call with an "it's good!" before Marv officially calls it. Strangely, however, Boomer had no comment on his WFAN radio show this morning when he and Carton talked about the botched radio call. Bad Boomer.

What do all of these calls have in common? All the color guys were ex-jocks. But you'd think an experienced PBP guy would set the color analyst straight, right?