Could You Repeat That?

As a man who enjoys a good brogue, yesterday was a fabulous day for thick accents on television. It started Sunday morning when I was watching the New Zealand/Italy World Cup match, where the color commentator was Scottish. I don't mean Craig Ferguson, Scotty from Star Trek Scottish; I'm talking deep woods Scottish. He had an incredibly thick accent that was indiscernible half of the time. To the credit of the guy calling the game he either did a much better job of understanding this guy than I did (or at least pretending that he did). To make matters worse, the match was tied at one, which was a fairly big upset in the making for New Zealand. As the game was getting later and later the Scotsman was getting more excited about the potential for a tie and thus was speaking faster, making his accent just that much thicker and harder to understand. Towards the end of the match it was way out there, sounding a little like this:

Play-by-Play announcer: A wonderful effort for the Kiwis.
Color Analyst: Yeah...weshsidie aidskw evuthusi metshc.
Me: I got 'Something, something, something, match.'
Color Analyst: Hheielkye aieddheu kisteenfy gieujbs uepshet.
Me: Nope, I got nothing on that pass.

Then later in the afternoon I was treated to Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell pulling away to win the US Open. While McDowell has only the slightest of accents, his caddy did not. Once it became clear that it was McDowell's Open to lose the cameras started to get closer to hear the strategy going into each and every shot. One exchange sounded along these lines:

McDowell: What are you thinking here?
His Caddy: Fortehs sehesth harkin fhoths. Yeah.
McDowell: Alright, if you think that's the best plan.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun, because I love a thick accent. All this really does is make me mad, because I had numerous teachers in college tell me I had to lose my Boston accent if I wanted a career in radio or TV. I had to spend a semester training myself to put a conscious effort into pronouncing my Rs. So, not only did I get screwed because the ladies love a good Boston accent (especially, for some reason, girls not from around here) but it turns out that it was rather unnecessary.