Football Commentary Quotes

Lehigh caught on, but still couldn’t stop the drive. By the time Carlisle neared the Lehigh goal line, both teams were cracking up. As Carlisle bashed in for another score, lineman William Garlow entertained the defense with his running commentary. “Gentlemen, this hurts me as much as it does you, but I’m afraid the ball is over. We regret it, I am sure you regret it, and I hope nothing happening here will spoil what for us has been a very pleasant afternoon.” Fans in the stands, who couldn’t hear Garlow, had no idea why players who’d just surrendered a touchdown were doubled over with laughter.

History also shows that salaries never go back to an old level. All this reminds me of the old commentary that goes, ‘When a man with money meets up with a man of experience, the man with experience usually ends up with the money and the man with the money ends up with experience.’ I have no intention of going bankrupt signing wealthy players.

Football is the “secret vice” of the civilized, wrote William Phillips in the journal Commentary in 1969. “Much of its popularity is due to the fact that it makes respectable the most primitive feelings about violence, patriotism, manhood.

My relationship with Colton was transactional. I provided food and furnishings, while he provided a warm body and endless commentary on Friday-night football. It wasn’t the life I’d ever pictured for myself, but no matter how many times I’d tried to end it with Colton, he somehow managed to weasel his way back into my life like a stubborn case of head lice.

The ultimate space-measurer in Dutch football is of course, Johan Cruyff. He was only seventeen when he first played at Ajax, yet even then he delivered running commentaries on the use of space to the rest of the team, telling them where to run, where not to run. Players did what the tiny, skinny teenager told them to do because he was right. Cruyff didn't talk about abstract space but about specific, detailed spatial relations on the field. Indeed, the most abiding image of him as a player is not of him scoring or running or tackling. It is of Cruyff pointing. 'No, not there, back a little... forward two metres... four metres more to the left.' He seemed like a conductor directing a symphony orchestra. It was as if Cruyff was helping his colleagues to realize an approximate rendering on the field to match the sublime vision in his mind of how the space ought to be ordered.

We are like football announcers constantly commenting on the game, while at the same time believing that the game is happening thanks to our commentary.