Sports commentator There are however exceptions to this — most of the United Kingdom's leading cricket and snooker commentators are former professionals in their sports, while the former Formula One racing commentator Murray Walker had no formal journalistic training and only limited racing experience of his own. In the United States, George "Pat" Summerall, a former professional kicker, spent most of his broadcasting career as a play-by-play announcer. Although the combination of a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator is standard , in the past it was much more common for a broadcast to have no analysts and just have a single
Sports commentator common format for a sports broadcast is to have an analyst/color commentator work alongside the main/play-by-play announcer. An example is "NBC Sunday Night Football" in the United States, which is called by color commentator Cris Collinsworth, a former American football receiver, and play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, a professional announcer. In the United Kingdom, however, there is a much less distinct division between play-by-play and color commentary, although two-man commentary teams usually feature an enthusiast with formal journalistic training but little or no competitive experience leading the commentary, and an expert former (or current) competitor following up with analysis or summary.