Our long national nightmare has ended.
Bryant Gumbel is leaving his position as the play-by-play voice of live games on NFL Network, it was announced today.
Both parties said it was Gumbel’s decision to step aside.
He was a curious choice; he gave the impression he never watched a football game before. He probably has scant familiarity with any financial markets, so expect to see him popping up in the Gold pit for CNBC someday soon.
Speaking of Pundit Wisdom, I don’t mean to pick on Bill Griffeth, but the other day he noted that he wanted to see the VIX under 20. Why? Because the market apparently does better when the VIX is under 20.
And that is likely a true statement, but we have a bit of a cause and effect mix up. The market would not rally because the VIX is under 20, rather the VIX might dip under 20 because the market is rallying.
It’s exactly like a Gumbel-ish football observation we hear all the time that, say, the Giants record in games where they rush 40 times is 50-1. They did not win because they ran so often; if that was the case they would just hand the ball off the first 40 plays of the game. Rather they ran because it was working, and they were winning.
Same with the VIX. It would decline below 20 if option writers felt comfortable selling there. What would make them comfortable? Likely a quiet and steadily uptrending market.
Now on some level volatility is predictive. And not perfectly inverse to the market direction, after all it is pretty flat in 2008 with the market down a good amount. But I would suggest that 20 is not some sort of magical number, and that if we see it there for any length of time it’s probably just a better market all around, and you wouldn’t need the VIX to confirm it.
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Gumbel’s debut was KC V. Denver on Thanksgiving 2 years ago. I was wearing out my phone texting all my buddies who were at the game– how brutal it was. I can’t believe NFL stuck with him for 2 years.
I like him on HBO sports…Odd No
yeah, I mean beyond his sort of self-importance, he’s a good announcer. It was just odd, he just seemed to not have prepared at all and would say things that make you scratch your head. Collingsworth I think would dig at that, around new years the first season Gumbel asks him what he’s doing for New Year’s Eve, and collingsworth said something like “studying football tapes, what i do every night”.