Announcerless game
The announcerless game was an American football contest played on December 20, 1980, between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. As an experiment, the NBC television network broadcast it without assigning any commentators to cover it. The two teams were playing the last game of that season for them as neither had qualified for the playoffs, and since the game was being broadcast nationally NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer decided on the idea to boost what would otherwise have been weak ratings. The Jets won a 24–17 upset victory.[1]
New York Jets
(3–12)
To replace the announcers, the network used more on-screen graphics than usual and asked the public address announcer at the Miami Orange Bowl to impart more information than he typically did. Efforts to use more sensitive microphones and pick up more sound from the field, however, did not succeed. While the experiment did increase the telecast's ratings, it was widely regarded as a failure since it did not provide sufficient context for viewers. No network, cable or internet broadcaster of any major U.S. professional sports team had ever tried it again, except through alternate feeds of games offered with announcers,[2] until a July 3, 2022, MLB game on Peacock between the Royals and Tigers.
Background[edit]
Don Ohlmeyer, then executive producer of NBC's telecasts of National Football League (NFL) games, began considering doing a telecast without announcers early in the 1980 season. He had several reasons. First, he had long believed that the announcers were overly chatty and did not let the game speak for itself when they needed to. Second, NBC, while it primarily covered the games of the NFL's American Football Conference (AFC) teams, generally in smaller markets, was earning ratings almost as good as those of rival CBS, who at the time was broadcasting games involving teams from the National Football Conference (NFC). A game without announcers might well attract enough viewers to put NBC past CBS.[1]
In October of that year reports began to circulate that Ohlmeyer was considering the idea. He confirmed it but said he would only actually do it for a game that had no playoff implications. The last week of the season gave him the chance, with a contest scheduled for Saturday, when it would be shown nationally, between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins.[3]
Although both teams had already been eliminated from the playoffs, they had reasons to win beyond ending their seasons on an upbeat note. The Dolphins, hosting the Jets at the Miami Orange Bowl, their home stadium at the time, had the better record at 8–7. Las Vegas oddsmakers made them 6-point favorites. Despite that line, however, they had not only lost to the Jets earlier that season, a loss that was widely believed to have been the one that put the Dolphins out of the playoffs since the Jets had been the only team the Dolphins lost to that they had been expected to beat. That loss had been their fifth straight to their AFC East division rivals; Miami had not beaten the Jets since 1977 despite an otherwise superior record during those seasons. The Dolphins were also bringing a three-game winning streak into the contest; a victory would redeem their failure to reach the playoffs with a winning record for the season.[3]
Coming into the game at 3–12, the Jets, touted by Jimmy the Greek at the beginning of the season as a possible Super Bowl contender, had long abandoned any hopes of the playoffs. But they, too, had something to prove. The visitors were coming off an embarrassing loss at home to the New Orleans Saints, the only team in the league with a worse record, who had come from behind late in the game for their only victory of the season. The team's owners were reportedly divided as to whether to retain head coach Walt Michaels for another season.[4]
Reaction was mixed, ranging from "good-natured humor to applause to some surprising anger," as Bryant Gumbel would later put it on air shortly before the telecast started.[5] "My first reaction was of incredible nerve, nervousness," Dick Enberg, one of the NBC announcers, recalled to ESPN 30 years later. "We all gathered together, hoping that Ohlmeyer was dead wrong ... What if this crazy idea really worked?" Dolphins' defensive end Bob Baumhower was also apprehensive about what viewers might overhear among the players. "I hope we're all extra careful," he said. "There's a lot of extra talking going on out there that people don't realize."[3]
Game[edit]
The game started at 12:30 p.m. The weather was seasonal for Miami, with temperatures around 69 °F (21 °C) and 12-mile-per-hour (19 km/h) winds. A total of 41,854 came to see the game at the Orange Bowl.[6]
Miami took an early lead with a 21-yard Uwe von Schamann field goal. After the Jets' Scott Dierking scored the game's first touchdown on a short plunge into the end zone, Duriel Harris caught a 16-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback David Woodley. The first quarter ended with the Dolphins up 10–7.[6]
Dierking went in from just outside the end zone once again three seconds before halftime to put the Jets ahead for good.[1] The Jets were weaker offensively the whole game, gaining fewer yards overall and turning over the ball five times. However, it was one of the two Dolphin turnovers that ultimately made the difference in the third quarter, when rookie safety Darrol Ray[7] went 71 yards for a score after intercepting a Woodley pass, his first career interception return for a score. Woodley brought his team to within four with a one-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter; Jets kicker Pat Leahy completed the scoring with a 35-yard field goal. The season ended for both teams with the Jets victorious, 24–17, leaving the Dolphins with a .500 finish.[6]
Reaction[edit]
As Ohlmeyer had hoped, the telecast drew higher ratings than it probably otherwise would have. "It was a dog of a game," he recalled to ESPN. "It did much better for us than [it should have]."[1] Writing two days later, Chicago Tribune television columnist David Israel agreed: "People talked about a game they would otherwise have ignored."[4] Of the approximately one thousand phone calls to the NBC switchboard, the network reported later, about 60% were supportive of the decision to go without announcers.[1]
Gumbel discounts the importance of that reaction, noting that a thousand callers is not statistically significant when set against the U.S. population of 200 million at that time. "I thought it was more amusing than anything else," he said later. "I viewed it as kind of a stunt with a small 's'."[1]
In retrospect, Ohlmeyer wished he had cut to Gumbel more frequently than he did. Michael Weisman, who co-produced the telecast, also felt the attempt to provide higher quality audio was unsuccessful. "There's all sorts of strange noises going on, buzzing and things that sound like a frying pan."[1] The technical limitations of television broadcasts also, Israel observed, made it hard for viewers to realize that touchdowns had been scored on two short runs and Harris's catch, since officials were not within the frame.[4]