I was watching a preview of the UNC-Ohio State game on ESPN last night and Digger Phelps referred to Tyler Hansbrough as Tyler Hansborough, as in, rhymes with Hillsborough. This is the second ESPN analyst to mispronounce his name inside of a week. Steve Lavin did it repeatedly during the Gonzaga game. I am probably making much ado about nothing but I have three issues here.
1. UNC releases a pronunciation guide with the roster and the game notes so there is no excuse not to know how to pronounce his name. In fact even the strength and conditioning coach has his name on the pronunciation guide just in case someone might want to say it during the broadcast.
2. Digger Phelps, Steve Lavin and anyone else at ESPN are getting paid entirely too much money not to get the freaking names of the players right, especially one that is preseason ACC and national player of the year according to various people. This might be excusable if you were talking about the starting forward at Weber State but not someone as recognizable as Hansbrough. Actually, no it is not excusable even for the Weber State guy because outside of a random slip they should pronounce the names correctly on the air, for no other reason than it is their job.
3. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious here, but is there something difficult about his name that makes it hard to pronounce? It is pronounced the way it looks. There is no "o" between the "b" and the "r" in the middle. The problem is they just look at the name and assume it is spelled "Hansborough" and not "Hansbrough"
Of course the funny thing is that after Digger got done calling him "Hansborough" Stacey Dales chimed in and pronounced it correctly. So, in an effort to be somewhat petty about this, until I hear these two individuals pronounce Hansbrough's name correctly, I will spell their names wrong when I refer to them on this blog.
Digger Felps and Steve Laving? You are on notice.