Its so easy to get sucked into being distracted by the announcers, in fact its almost impossible not to, the folk that do the broadcast really should consider this. I think we should first recognize that these folks are being encouraged to behave the way they behave, so in their world they are doing a good job, the fact that they can be so immune from what the audience feels is kind of shocking, but its true.
There are two general rules to understand when considering the whole announcer mess, 1) they are part of the media (I work in the media) which means they look at the audience as dumb, 2) (this is critical) sport and news broadcasting come from the same general background, radio. Folks, radio is THE fundamental reason why the announcers talk incessantly. The rule in radio was, NEVER EVER let there be dead air, ALWAYS talk NO MATTER WHAT! Clear your voice, mumble, ruffle papers and make noise on the desk, if there is silence you will be fired. In TV the rule is NEVER have a black screen and never have silence, have a bad shot, a moving camera anything but a blank screen and silence. The radio rules have been killing TV for years and it actually seems like it wont end soon.
The broadcast executives have constructed a view of how a show works with one announcer providing this another one providing that etc, one of these guys is the designated talker, they make sure there is NEVER any dead air, (an engine sound would count as dead are because, the audience is dumb and needs to have their hand held throughout) For SKY its Crofty, for BBC it was Walker and for NBC its Diffey. I detest all three in large part because I hear them saying I am stupid and need their help. F off guys. If we were to talk to these guys, including the sports executives they would see we know the game and don’t need the talk, but they would just say to us, but your the exception, we have to reach everyone and most of them are dumb, so, sorry but we are going to do it exactly the way they did it 80 years ago in radio. I guess you wont get fired if you do things the way the last guy did the same thing, so here we are, post radio and they wont stop.
There is one other important invisible issue, the announcers get paid well, the executives want them to earn their pay, and talk, drive the emotional level of the audience, force the audience to be more engaged etc. We are so screwed when we want to hear the race.