2012 NFL TV Announcer Rankings - What's Your Take?

A few weeks ago, I came across AWFUL ANNOUNCING'S GRADES of the top NFL broadcast teams, as well as SI.COM'S 2012 NFL ANNOUNCER RANKINGS. (The italicized all-cap words are links to the source material.)

Since I seem to recall plenty of CSCers expressing strong feelings about the various NFL announcing teams during each and every week of the regular season, I thought it might be interesting to compile the scores and rankings from both sources, present them here, and then engage in some civil discourse over them. I mean, it's the slow as molasses off-season, people, so what else are we gonna do?

Brad Gagnon of awfulannouncing.com graded each of the NFL game-airing networks' top broadcasting teams, and then provided 2-3 paragraphs of rationale for/analysis of each duo. At the end, he touched on some highlights of the 2012 year in NFL announcing, and praised a couple of lesser-appreciated broadcasting teams.

Here are Brad's grades for each duo, placed in order of highest to lowest according to my rudimentary sequencing skills:

Maybe resident player grader Andrew Juge can help determine if Nantz/Simms should be considered tied with Tirico/Gruden or not, because I know I sure as hell can't tell.

Chris Burke of SI.com's 'Audibles' blog eschews grades, but does give a Letterman 'Top Ten'-style ranking of NFL game-announcing television teams, as well as some explanation of his/her reasoning, and closes with brief mention of other noteworthy announcing combos.

And here they are, from the home office in cyberspace...your SI.com Top Ten NFL Announcing Dynamic Duos of 2012!

1) Michaels/Collinsworth
2) Nessler/Mayock
3) CBS's Ian Eagle/Dan Fouts
4) Tirico/Gruden
5) Buck/Aikman
6) FOX's Kenny Albert/Daryl Johnston
7) CBS's Greg Gumbel/Dan Dierdorf
8) Nantz/Simms
9) CBS's Kevin Harlan/Solomon Wilcots
10) CBS's Marv Albert/Rich Gannon

A side note of, um, note (ahem) is that both articles specifically cite COLLINSWORTH'S LATE-GAME ARITHMANCY (google it and you'd be right to guess that I'm a Harry Potter fan) in the Saints first win of 2012 on SNF against the Chargers as evidence of his worth as an analyst.

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So there you have a couple of sets of internet-published opinions on who the 'best of the best' were in NFL game announcing for 2012.

Let's publish yours right now, in comment form in the thread below.

Be as specific as you'd like to be, focusing on the pairs as a whole, discussing individual talents/shortcomings, or criticizing the rankings/grading systems.

But I'm asking you to do a little more than just drop clever name-calling bits and profane exhortations here to make your mark. Please read the full articles by these yahoos and THEN share your opinion with at least SOME supporting evidence for why you believe it to be so.