I wish you could get alternate audio on all sporting events. In football you would be able to hear the crowd, anything over the stadiums speakers and the band, or you could listen to the moron talking heads we have now that half the time you wonder if they are even watching the game they are attempting to call. For racing you would just hear the cars and maybe they could add some in car radio. I think this is a great idea. Not sure if it would work with cable but I know with the two satellite companies you have alternate audio options. I love hearing the sounds of sporting events but after watching sports for over 30 years I get really tired of listening to all these idiots opinions and basically the same old crap they say week in and week out year after year.. I think we need a fresh spin on sports broadcasting. I think in the long run if there would be a way to track who was listening to what the broadcast companies could save millions a year by not employing these fools. 

Really? Is this on extra innings or mlb network games?

20 or 30 years ago one of the networks decided to do an NFL game without announcers.  The booth mics picked up the PA announcer and field mics got the sounds of the game (on a five-second delay, of course).  Viewers hated it because nobody explained to them the nuances of each play, and they had to spend too much time concentrating on the broadcast.  Of course, these days so many games are televised that the quality of the broadcast teams has been diluted.  Instead of hearing only the likes of Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel, Vern Lundquist and Dick Stockton, for 95% of the games we basically get bozos who don't know when to shut up or who spend too much time analyzing the upcoming "big game of the week" instead of paying attention to the action in the game they're covering.

Real easy way to do this.

Go behind your home theatre receiver, & disconnect the center channel speaker.

Done.

Their audio seemed to be about 45 seconds to a minute ahead of the video feed, based on the commentary in the chat thread, which is about 1-2 plays, sometimes. Wasn't that kind of distracting?

Michael Reghi was on the ESPN3 broadcast yesterday. I did not recognize him at first until I heard the excitement in his voice when Kent did something good or when Ohio fumbled (again and again and again). He just annoys me.

Now I need to upgrade to a theater receiver. Wish I could do that with my sound bar. 

So disconnecting the center channel gets rid of the announcers? That is awesome. 

If the game is mixed in discrete 5.1 or upmixed well, yes, it should, because mono signals should get directed to the center channel. Might get some bleed if it isn't discrete 5.1 - not sure how an upmixing receiver would handle something like an ESPN3 stream which obviously comes in stereo... Tim might be able to give you more insight on that - I don't have a surround system at home.