Don’t get me wrong. I love good commentary for certain sports. I’m just saying there are sports where it plays a bigger role, due to how the game/sport is played. Those sports, at the professional level, usually have commentators that are complete junkies or are ex-players.
Then there is also poor commentating, which most can attest to even for NCAA FBS football. There are plenty of non-P5 games where the announcers are horrible, they know little about the team or conference they are commentating for, and it seems like they are just there to collect a paycheck.
Volleyball, much like tennis, doesn’t require much commentary during matches, because the pacing is pretty fast and if you have more than 2 brain cells you can pretty much figure out what teams are trying to do.
NASCAR requires good commentating because (when not crashing) there isn’t much going on for the viewer. I mean, if I see a car slowing down and it has smoke billowing out of the hood or an obvious flat tire, the commentating doesn’t add much.
Football is a complicated team sport where a lot can happen on each play, and there is sometimes a good bit of time between plays (if there is a break or time out) so good commentating is required to explain what happened and why.
Soccer and hockey commentating has always seemed amiss. Commentators just seem like excited fans and add little while play is ongoing. They almost never explain why something is happening, and they very rarely try to explain to the audience what strategy is being employed and why.
I don’t know....to each their own I guess.