The answer is alternate audio. We need to have an option to listen to whatever broadcast team we choose. As anyone who has tried it knows, it is nearly impossible with the latencies in media streams to get your TV to line up with your radio. It will be good for sports. The fans will be happier. Sportscasters won't carry the same weight that they once did, and I know this will bother a lot of purists, but I don't care. Purists end up putting things on much taller pedestals than they ever truly stood on anyway.

In the short term, networks can even use it as a money-making opportunity by charging a small nominal fee. Trust me, if I am going to sit there for multiple hours watching my favorite team, it wouldn't be a big deal for me to pony up a couple of dollars to listen to announcers that are speaking to me rather than some tertiary audience that doesn't really care about the subject of basketball and the strategies in the game.

Who knows? In the long run, maybe this will end up being something like podcasting where every joe shmoe on the couch can do their own commentary and share it over the internet. If anyone wants to figure out a way to do this and steal the idea, just let me know so my friends and I can be beta testers. We think we are pretty entertaining.