The future of professional surf broadcasting!
Fire is ravishing southern California right now and I know that many of you live in Los Angeles. Are you ok? Home fine? Hedge seared? Can we use the “fire” metaphorically yet or is it still too early? I’m going to press ahead, if that’s ok with you, and use it metaphorically. I am going to wax on about the “fire” missing from the World Surf League broadcast booth. That’s ok, right? Good. So the Pipeline Masters begins in just 24 hours and the eyes of the surfing world will be on the North Shore and the ears of the surfing world will be listening to Turpel, Blakey, Pottz n Pete once again and son of a bitch. Is it too much to ask for some heat from them? For some incandescence?
Apparently it is because we have been stuck with the same basic crew since the inception of the World Surf League née Association of Surfing Professionals and have been served a bowl of lukewarm water with a side of lukewarm water.
We get nothing and I look back at the old pictures of Pottz and hear old Pottz stories and blame mostly him. He used to have a flame in his belly. Now he has a jelly donut.
I have given up on this crew. Staid institutions like the NFL, NBA, Olympic ice skating have more opinionated personalities in the booth than professional surfing. The real tennis tour has John McEnroe for pity’s sake. This crew is bland and getting more bland but the future is always around the corner and yesterday, whilst sitting across from David Lee Scales for our bi-weekly chat, he suggested Gabriel Medina could be the inferno that we need. Oh, not today of course. He has many surfing years ahead of him but when those wane might he be a perfect colorman?
Who else would you suggest? A listen here for more about Patrick Ewing, Jake Paterson, the apparent lousiness of SnakeTales, why Stab and The Inertia both suck but why they shouldn’t suck a dick.