Awful Announcing, a website normally dedicated to spotlighting poor announcing, released a list of top local NFL announcers as voted on by their readers. They asked voters to grade announcing crews from an A to an F and provide comments to support their grades. Awful Announcing added up the scores and compiled the list into an article. Out of the 3,500 votes, the team that was #1 on the list was none other than the Green Bay Packers’ own Wayne Larrivee and Larry McCarren who have been leading the Packers radio
network team for 27 years.
Larrivee and McCarren received the most A’s out of the 32 booths (68 of 137) and barely beat out the Arizona Cardinals in Awful Announcing’s scoring system. They scored a total of 11 F’s.
The voters focused most of their praise on Larrivee, who has been the play-by-play announcer for the Packers since 1999 after stints calling games for the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears. One commenter referred to him as “top-notch” while another called him “a top-tier play-by-play man who hits the big moments so well and brings both passion and poise with how he calls the game.”
Voters weren’t as enthusiastic about Larry McCarren, with one complaining that he “drags the whole enterprise down by mumbling his analysis and shouting over Wayne’s big calls.” In other words, the sentiment seems to be that Larry McCarren is the kid in the group project who gets an A despite doing nothing. McCarren has been an announcer since 1994 and was a center for the Packers from 1973-1984 where he was selected to the Pro Bowl twice (‘83, ‘84).
The rest of the NFC North was in the top ten, with the Detroit Lions coming in at 5, the Chicago Bears at 9, and the Minnesota Vikings at 10.
