Chris Fowler, Jim Nantz, and the Trickiness of Sports Game Commentary

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(Also, apologies the newsletter is going out in the afternoon today, we actually had TOO MANY subscribers, so we had to pay extra money to raise our subscription level, so it took a half a day to iron that out.)

At some point this month, EA has promised a “full reveal” of EA Sports College Football 26. I have said previously to be somewhat cautious about this statement and instead assume it’s more an unveiling of major features and a trailer with some gameplay included rather than details about every single mode and feature in the game, but the point is the hype is about to start building towards its July release date. It was the most successful sports game last year both critically and commercially, and so it’s a big sophomore season for the series.

With that in mind, one thing that has been on my mind for months is what happens with commentary in year two? More specifically, I’m curious to see what happens with Chris Fowler year over year. While it’s not a top priority — it’s not going to be the thing that makes or breaks how I feel about CFB 26 — I think Chris Fowler (and to a lesser extent Kirk Herbstreit) were the obvious weak links in the booth last year. In comparison, the three-man team of Davis, Pollack, and Palmer was solid, especially for a first-year effort.

To go back to last year’s marketing, EA framed it as Herbstreit and Fowler only getting the “big games” to make them feel special when you heard them. This makes sense in that they are the top ESPN team in real college football and so they deserved that billing in the video game, but it also means we heard them way less. I feel confident saying that was not an accident. Hearing them more would have been a bad thing because they were objectively worse in that their recordings were not as consistent in terms of sound mixing and microphone quality, and then subjectively they were not as good as the three-man booth in terms of depth and quality of commentary.

To go back way further than last year, I’m not sure how much I’ve talked about this or not in the past on OS, but I did work at EA Tiburon for three-plus years working as a game designer mostly on Madden, but also a teeny bit on the still-alive-at-the-time NCAA Football and the on-again-off-again NBA Live/Elite series. I joined up at a crazy time as I was at EA for Madden 13-15 and then the start of ‘16. This time frame coincided with the jump from PS3/Xbox 360 to PS4/Xbox One (and PS Vita), the introduction of Connected Franchise Mode (and stripping out of the old franchise mode), and an all-new commentary team/commentary tech. I essentially became the lead designer (see: only designer) on commentary right after arriving at Tiburon due to another designer leaving for another job.

By the time I got to EA, there was already an agreement in place for Jim Nantz and Phil Simms (the top CBS crew at the time) to join the booth and replace Cris Collinsworth and Gus Johnson. I think Nantz got the role in part because he was already doing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters for EA Tiburon so he had a pre-existing relationship with the studio, and Simms got the job because he was Nantz’s real broadcast partner. Simms would eventually give way to Tony Romo in 2017 on CBS, and both would depart the Madden series at around that same time as well.

(A quick aside, but #Fartgate remains one of the funnier rumors that stuck around. Nantz/Simms were already nearing the end of their partnership for whatever reason — I have no insider knowledge, and they were always very friendly during recording sessions — and while Simms always denied farting, it’s hilarious to think an alleged fart played into the break-up. I always thought the clip showed the two of them getting up to go back to calling the game and not realizing they were still on camera, but I’m also happy to believe Simms was hot boxing the booth with rancid gas to try and break Nantz.)

I’m never sure what to “give away” about past experiences working on those games — I think a lot of developers feel the same way, which is why you don’t get tons of public retrospectives on video games — and it’s always hard to take full credit or blame for stuff because video game development really is a collective process. Beyond things being cut or scaled down during development, you work within teams on these massive video games. You have responsibilities and a personal vision, but you’re reliant on others and thus at the mercy of many other people around you. Along those same lines, you also don’t want to be overly critical because you might be crapping on someone else’s work you have no insights into or tearing down someone who was dealing with a million other roadblocks that were impacting how well they could do their job. In short, video game development is a pesky process full of complications and chaos, especially when hundreds of people are involved.

However, I have no problem saying I was never that proud of the work I did on the commentary in those Madden games because, well, I never thought it was that good. And, to be clear, it’s not really any one person’s fault that was the case. We all worked very hard, did the best we could, but ultimately just made something that wasn’t “best in class” for a variety of reasons. I will always be the first to take the blame for it not being good enough, but I can also look back in hindsight and discuss the challenges that were in place.

(This is also why I always question people on OS or elsewhere who say developers don’t know what they’re doing or don’t “get it” when things don’t come together. Most of the time, a designer knows when something they make is coming together or not. Their taste isn’t “off” or whatever, their work just doesn’t connect in the end for a multitude of other reasons.)

Video Game Commentary Is Not Like Calling A Real Game

Nantz was an easy guy to work with overall, super personable and friendly, and he did his best in the studio. He’s an all-time broadcaster, the voice of The Masters, and his legacy is secured. That said, video game commentary and real broadcasting are not the same thing. Whether he noticed it or not, he struggled at times to find his “broadcaster voice” when doing commentary sessions for Madden. The “bad” version of that voice usually included ending phrases with a higher inflection — almost like you would when asking a question — when compared to his normal broadcaster voice. He’d also add in extra unnecessary words rather than speaking in fragments, and I would bet that aspect came from having to read off a piece of paper rather than just watching the action unfold in front of him.

(This is a quick example, but I think it’s perfect for explaining what Nantz could struggle with at times. During pre-snap he says “split backfield here” in that slightly higher tone with that upwards inflection, and then he probably doesn’t need to say “here” either.)

Being a sports video game commentator is not a fun or easy job, and it’s even less fun when you’re the play-by-play commentator. I think a lot of the top guys get excited about the idea of having their voices in these big sports games and getting a chance to spread their brand to a wider audience, but then a lot of them come to dread or even regret the decision. I’m only guessing here because Nantz and Simms never had any really negative things to say to us, but it has to be more than just expired contracts being the reason some commentators decide to move on from doing video games. It can be very tough on your voice — you’re doing not just one excited call in the teeth of a game but rather 10-20 at a time with no crowd or action to feed off — and it’s very boring as you read off similar lines over and over again before moving on to the next tedious set of calls.

There are ways to massage these issues with the talent. You can give them real clips to commentate over, use real lines from their TV broadcasts so they can hear their voice, mix and match the order you do things in to keep things fresh during recording sessions, allow them to ad-lib more rather than just read scripts, and so on. We used these methods and others as the years progressed, and we figured out what worked best for Nantz over time. Still, I would say we never got “peak” Nantz.

(I know you’ll need to watch that link on YouTube to hear/see them due to how the NFL handles clips, but it’s a reminder for those who need it for how Nantz sounds when he’s cooking during real games.)

The one issue I would say that was totally out of my control was the recording hours. Again, this was all negotiated before I arrived, but we had 40 hours a year with Nantz and 40 hours a year with Simms. That might sound like a lot, but that is nothing, especially in year one of a new team. It’s not like you record with them every second of those 40 hours, and I think most of the time when I hear about recording hours now the low-end is closer to 80-100 hours — I can assure you even that isn’t nearly enough time. The problem, especially in year one, is that we ended up leaving a decent amount of “meh” line readings in the game because we simply had no coverage for certain situations otherwise. By the end of year three, Nantz was a more than solid video game announcer, but you’re always at a deficit and always behind when you have so few hours. And you’re even more in the hole when part of those precious hours are going towards fixing up old stuff that wasn’t good enough the first time around.

(As one other quick aside, one thing to remember is these top broadcasters don’t “tryout” for the role either. They’re professionals, and you’re essentially asking them to do what they already do in real life, so it’s just a negotiation about money and time. You don’t get to see if they’re any good at doing video game commentary before they’re hired.)

Chris Fowler From The Real CFB Playoffs Is Not The One We Get In College Football 25

I bring up that somewhat brief background working with Jim Nantz because I sense a lot of the same issues when I hear Chris Fowler in EA Sports College Football 25.

If I’m judging based on real life, Fowler is not on Nantz’s level in terms of his status or even his football calls. He’s a good broadcaster, but it’s not really a slight to say he’s not on the level of one of the most well known broadcasters of all-time. Regardless, this isn’t about how good you are in real life, this is about how you translate your voice to the video game.

On a technical level, there’s some obvious mixing issues going on right now with his work:

Listen to how different the mixing and commentary line itself sound before the touchdown and then after the touchdown.

My assumption with the technical issues can trace back to how a lot of these recordings were done. If we go off the below Twitter embed, it looks like Fowler was doing a lot of recordings in his house. Now, this likely in part due to the downstream effects of Covid and remote work still being in full swing when they started recording, but it does come with the upside that it’s easier to get time to record with Fowler. These guys are on the road a lot, and so it’s not always easy to get to the same recording studio. The idea of being able to get time with them at their homes is a dream in a sense. The issue is Chris Fowler is not an audio engineer and even if you walk him through everything, it’s not going to be the same every session, and you can only master audio so much to try and hide any problems that crop up.

The other issue beyond the technical one is you can tell he’s recording in his house based on some of his lines. There was a thread many months back on OS where people were discussing the problems with Fowler, and so I found it very funny to see multiple people say something like what OS user PhillyPhantic14 said:

Well, PhillyPhantic14, he was recording many of his lines at home. Fowler also seems to have the same issue as Nantz in terms of finding the right way to inflect when it comes to certain lines:

Listen to Fowler’s line right after the snap. He has that slightly rising inflection to “off the play fake on first down” much like Nantz did, and he doesn’t quite have that deeper timbre to his voice that is there during a normal TV broadcast.

I can see why some people would say he doesn’t want to wake up his kids in his home based on his calls as well. You can go back to that punt return TD clip and then listen to how Rece Davis calls a TD in the game:

And it’s not like Fowler can’t get excited like that. He can meet the moment with the best of them:

I would say Fowler likes to let the moment breathe and let the crowd do the talking at points, but he’s got all the tools to be a good video game broadcaster. On top of that, he’s so clearly passionate about the game. We heard multiple times how a lot of those guys (Fowler, Davis, Herbstreit) desperately wanted the game to come back, so I have no doubt they all want to deliver the best game possible to us.

I’m hopeful for year two that we see marked improvement. I believe EA has much more than 40 hours, they should be in a real studio with more consistency, and now that EA and Fowler have worked together on a consistent basis, everything should improve. At the very least, I don’t think the mixing should be off again, especially because the three-man booth basically didn’t have any of those technical issues.

There’s no magic button to press to make all this come together though. I think some are quick to say “just hire actors” or “just do AI” and I get where that comes from. You get theoretical unlimited hours, and maybe you can better guide the talent to what sounds right, but those things aren’t elixirs either. You still need to put all that commentary in the right spots. You still need to have tech in place to play commentary at all the right moments. You still need to have people to listen to all those lines and make sure it all flows the right way. I think we believe unlimited hours with actors or this concept of AI would fix everything, but it wouldn’t. We’re likely much further away than you think from finding ways to perfect video game commentary through technology alone.

People always point back to NFL 2K5, and I love Dan Stevens and Peter O’Keefe as much as the next guy, but even those actors sounded stilted at times.

It’s unavoidable to some degree to sound stilted when so much is being rearranged and recorded at various times, and those guys were very good at their job, but the point is even that sort of commentary does not entirely hold up. Instead, what I think the power of that game was that the highs were so high from a presentation standpoint that it made folks overlook most of the downsides. I would say that became 2K’s calling card overall, and it translated to NBA 2K’s banter being so cool (especially years back) even if it was ultimately repetitive.

All of this is a long way of saying that the broadcasters you select do matter, and it’s a process to get the best out of them, but even the best commentators won’t get you all the way there. So while I’m curious to see if Fowler improves in year two, College Football 26 commentary also needs to find a way to bring something “wow” worthy to the table in the same way 2K has done in the past to make people appreciate it over a longer period of time.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase

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