Twitter just made watching bad football games more interesting for me. I’ve been complaining this football season about the various wrongs the NFL has visited upon me: local game blackouts, the general poor play of my beloved Eagles just when it matters, and, of course, the inexplicable ineptitude of some of the announcing crews.

Today when I turned on the NBC broadcast of Jets-Bengals, I wondered why NBC’s NBA announcer, a washed up quarterback who bombed on Monday Night Football, and Joe Gibbs (great coach, lousy announcer) were calling … a playoff game. Basically this just reinforces that NBC only has a single crew of competent announcers and that they are assigned to the night game.

Good, you say, why shouldn’t the Eagles-Cowboys get the star announcer team (I agree)? The difference today has been the introduction of social media into the game, and the usage of the hashtag #announcer fail (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=announcerfail). There’s a backchannel discussion going on during the game (pay attention, @NFLPRGuy), and the fans are not impressed with NBC’s coverage.

The takeaway? There’s no such thing as a break between news cycles. If you’re doing something amazing, expect to be cheered in unlikely places. If you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, expect, well … ridicule from social media. The fans are listening — they know a lot about football — and they know when they’re being played.