Brent Musburger Criticized for Remarks About Quarterback’s Girlfriend During BCS Title Game – Did He Go Over the Line? [POLL]

Here's the deal!

In today’s extremely politically correct uptight world, it isn’t kosher to express the opinion that someone is pretty…and further, to suggest that dads should teach their sons to play quarterback so that they too may someday have as beautiful a girlfriend as Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron.

I guess if one is as beautiful as the young lady in question, acknowledging her beauty is anathema in today’s uptight society.

That’s why, according to this, the network which carried the broadcast, ESPN, felt the need to apologize to its audience.

On Tuesday morning, commentary on the broadcast of the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Alabama and Notre Dame included words like “creepy,” “awkward,” “uncomfortable” and “heteronormative.”

The subject was not Alabama’s 42-14 victory, but comments made during the game by the ESPN play-by-play announcer Brent Musburger regarding the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A J McCarron.

In the first quarter, ESPN showed McCarron’s girlfriend,
Katherine Webb, who was sitting near his parents. Musburger called the 23-year-old Webb, a former Miss Alabama, a “lovely lady” and “beautiful,” and said to his broadcast partner, Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio State, “You quarterbacks get all the good-looking women.”

“A J’s doing some things right,” Herbstreit replied. Musburger, 73, then said, “If you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with Pop.”

Almost immediately, Webb’s name began trending on Twitter and her account added nearly 100,000 followers within hours, including athletes like LeBron James. Meanwhile, Musburger’s comments, which some saw as harmless fun, struck other observers as off-putting.

“It’s extraordinarily inappropriate to focus on an individual’s looks,” said Sue Carter, a professor of journalism at Michigan State. “In this instance, the appearance of the quarterback’s girlfriend had no bearing on the outcome of the game. It’s a major personal violation, and it’s so retrograde that it’s embarrassing. I think there’s a generational issue, but it’s incumbent on people practicing in these eras to keep up and this is not a norm.”

ESPN planned in advance to mention that Webb, an Auburn graduate, is dating McCarron. But when Musburger’s gushing over her went too far, some staffers in the production truck at the stadium “cringed.” Soon after, John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president of production, told Musburger through the announcer’s earpiece that he had to “move on,” according to a person briefed on the conversation.

The network apologized for Musburger’s comments Tuesday.

“We always try to capture interesting story lines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test,” the ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said. “However, we apologize that the commentary in this instance went too far and Brent understands that.”
For her part, Webb did not seem to mind what Musburger said.

“It was kind of nice,” Webb told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I didn’t look at it as creepy at all. For a woman to be called beautiful, I don’t see how that’s an issue.”

And maybe that’s the point.

In other cultures, not acknowledging a woman is taken as an affront by the woman in question.

Here, if you acknowledge a woman’s beauty, you’re tantamount to being a sexual deviant.