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Sports punditry is UK's 'least factually relevant' profession

Sports pundits have come top in the search for the least factually relevant people in the country, a report revealed today.

Examining over 400 professions, researchers at Cambridge University were surprised to find that the experts wheeled in to give the benefit of their experience in various sports provided only one previously unknown fact for every 49 minutes they talked.

They narrowly beat breakfast TV presenters, who revealed one illuminating fact for every 47 minutes of talk and pub bores who on average divulge a snippet once every three-quarters of an hour.

"We were surprised," lead researcher Jeffrey Chamberlain told The Rockall Times. "At first glance, they would appear to be giving an incisive view of what is happening but once we applied the test question 'Have you learnt anything new from this statement?', it soon became that all they did was repeat pundit platitudes and talk about themselves."

Nearly 34 per cent of all comments made referred to events which had already happened and a viewer would be only too aware of, Chamberlain revealed. "For example, if you have just watched a track event and the camera goes to the pundit in the studio, he or she will spend the first five minutes watching the same event and telling you who is leading and who wins — even though you had just watched it moments ago."

This repetition is then traditionally followed by a discussion of the leading sportsmen in which facts about their childhood, training and recent form will be regurgitated — despite the fact that the live commentator had already given the vast majority of the information in the run-up and during slow points in the event itself.

"There is even the perverse situation in which the pundit repeats facts which he or she had only learnt from listening to the commentator minutes before," Chamberlain continued.

However, the least factually useful aspect to most TV punditry comes when the pundit himself regales the audience with loosely-connected tales from their own sporting lives. "At best these are boring; at worst, completely inaccurate," the report states.

And if that wasn't bad enough, sports punditry is getting worse, the researchers found. "The longer a pundit appears on the screen the less information you actually receive," Chamberlain told us. "But there is a growing trend to put them on the screen more frequently and for longer periods. By the next Olympics, we may go whole days without learning anything new."

This view is supported by a different report released last week which found that for every minute of actual sports action shown on the TV during this year's Winter Olympic, an incredible four minutes fifty-two seconds was consumed by badly-dressed pundits waffling on about nothing at all.

A spokesman for the National Association of Sports Pundits refuted the accusation that his members were as useful as a fishing rod in the Sahara, however. "Well, while many have said that their recent form has been in doubt there remains a strong likelihood that that situation could change for the better at any moment. It wouldn't be the first time that we have been surprised by a sudden improvement in ability. When I was a pundit, it was often the case that an event would produce an unexpected result and then we would have to re-evaluate not only what happened then but also what had happened previous to that event. You never can tell in this game. But then that's the beauty of it. Even an apparently innocuous result could..."

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