It's come to our attention that our colleague has been taking quite a whipping in the press this past week. A sampling:

Tom Hoffarth wrote in the LA Daily News: "We did change our opinion of him as each game was played. It got progressively worse."

Andrew Marchand wrote in the NY Post that O'Brien, "has not been great so far. He has done the prep work, but his words don't sync up perfectly with the action. When a goal is scored or a great save is made, O'Brien doesn't seem to trust his instincts yet, and is sometimes slow to react."

And, here at Trecker HQ, we've received a couple hundred comments on ESPN/ABC and O'Brien, all of which are overwhelmingly negative.

Now, it should be noted before you read the next paragraph that all the people we talk about below are either friendly colleagues, or, in one case, bona-fide pals. So, take what we say with a grain of salt. Also, please note that we have not seen the ESPN/ABC telecasts because, duh, we're in Germany, so we don't know what they're saying.

Six months ago, O'Brien had never called a soccer game. He cad called the Mets and the Marlins and spent 15 years doing baseball. He's considered to be one of the better baseball play-by-play guys and he certainly lends the telecasts (on paper, anyway) an air of gravitas and seriousness. When ESPN selected him, we wrote that we thought that was a sign that the net was finally taking the sport seriously.

Unspoken (because we knew it wouldn't matter) was the question of why ESPN continues to idle Derek Rae, the net's best soccer play-by-play guy by far. Rae is probably the best soccer PBP guy in the USA right now, so why leave him out of the team entirely? Is it his accent? His penchant for doing his job (i.e. telling it like it is)? We don't know, but this seemed foolish to us in 2002 and seems even more foolish now.

We have a lot of sympathy for O'Brien. Reading between the lines, it seems that ESPN decided that Rob Stone couldn't cut it and wanted a "real" announcer to step in. (No offense to Robbie intended.) That put O'Brien in a horrible situation: He had a dream assignment, right enough, but in a) a sport Americans love to loathe and b) there was no way in four months' time he was going to learn everything about the last century of the sport. Add in the incredible, geeky pettiness of some American soccer fans who have formed a subculture of hatred in then sport directed at anyone that might possibly open the game up to wider audience (and thus threatening their "clubby" stature), and it's quite possible that no matter who or what ESPN put up on the screen, it wouldn't succeed.

One of the most woeful aspects of the televised game in the USA has been the failure to develop quality homegrown broadcasts of the sport. Cheap budgets have ensconced some real hacks in the booths while ensuring that anyone of any talent goes into calling other sports. Dave Johnson in D.C. is one of the few guys who shuttles back and forth between NBA work and MLS; otherwise you basically have a bunch of fans calling games. This leads to amateurish broadcasts, alienated casual viewers, and hard-core fans who just turn the sound off.

One of the best possible things to come out of this Cup would be to see ESPN and SUM spend the next four years hiring pros with experience in other sports and bringing them up to speed. We'd also be sad if O'Brien never called a soccer game again - that wouldn't be fair to a guy that went into a no-win situation and is honestly making the best of it. If you're unhappy with the telecasts, direct your ire away from him and up the food chain at ESPN's management and producers. And also ask yourself this: As good as Rae is, how do you think he'd perform if he suddenly had to fill in on an NFL broadcast?

I know the answer to that last one because I once had to fill in on an American football game - a sport I don't follow and know next to nothing about. It was damn tough. I imagine this is darn hard for O'Brien as well.