It was not sarcasm. The begging for sponsers got a little old in the SVB vs Earl match "and that is the last I will say about that" turned out to be a lie as he went into the same song and dance 20 minutes later. He lambasted pool commentation on one of the podcasts for a lack of knowledge and bad calls, but he himself has made some pretty brutal judgements on patterns and the proper shots to be played and why players do what they do at times. He can tend to ramble on at times about stuff, I have not been counting but the number of times I have heard "if Kevin Trudeau had given me that 12 million dollars we would still be playing pool tournaments with $100,000 added today" is getting up there. I think he is great for pool as an industry person, and listening to him talk about the industry on a podcast is a treat, but when I am sweating a match and he is commentating he can get to be a little much.
The one thing about commentating, and take a lesson from Joe on this, you don't have to be talking all the time. Only commentate when you have something worth saying. Don't sit there and go "OMG I have not said anything in a while, the people probably think it is too quiet, I better say something!" "Uhh, well, that was a good break, he made a ball and has a shot on the 1-ball!". Yeah, great, thanks for that info, if only these feeds had video and were not just audio, oh wait, they do.
IMO Joe Rogan is the perfect announcer, if SVB and him are there tonight I want them both in the booth at the same time, and no question and answer period, just let SVB sit there and chat with Joe and watch the match and give his input when he has something to say. In some ways it seemed like SVB escaped from the commentating booth to get out of more question/answer period which he was too humble to call an end to and instead took the "uh.. I gotta go" route. Let the guy sit there in a comfy chair and once in a while say "hmph, that was the wrong shot he should have done X" as he did when Oscar tried that crazy cut on the 9-ball. SVB said what Oscar should have done instead and that is one guy who when he says what a player should have done, we are all getting a free lesson from one of the best players on this planet.
And Shane knows enough about commentating to not volunteer meaningless banter, he is pretty quiet and watches the match until there is a key moment when a comment makes sense. The snooker commentators know this too, if a person is going to commentate pool matches I highly reccomend they watch some professional snooker and realize just how much talking the commentators are actually doing and how much they let the game speak for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ4g0xsIzaU
Notice, none of the useless banter about the price of rice in China.
