Giants Moving from Left to Right

I missed the opening kickoff of this year's Super Bowl between New York and New England because I was at my nearby Publix buying some groceries. When I got back into my car, I flicked on the radio to hear what was going on. By that time, the Patriots had given up a safety early in the first quarter and, trailing 2-0, kicked the ball back to the Giants. New York lined up for their first play of the drive. And then the radio play-by-play announcer did something that has never failed to amuse me over the years: he said "Giants moving from left to right."

Well, from where the announcer was sitting, they may well have been moving from left to right. But according to anyone watching from the other side of the stadium, they were moving from right to left! As a matter of fact, before the "directions" were given, I had them moving the "opposite" way, too!

If further play-by-play of the game had included references to "left" or "right", I would have understood this to be a device to help explain what was happening on the field. But it is only said at the beginning of drives at the start of each quarter.

Are there people out there who can't properly picture in their own minds how a game is going without explicitly being provided with left-right directions? I think this must be the implication behind professional, trained broadcasters saying this so consistently. Apparently, there are listeners who are so imagination-challenged that they have to have their own "mental screens" filled in for them. I have also heard this "moving from left-to-right" (or the reverse) on basketball radio broadcasts...