Rose Parade 2014: Al Roker, Hota Kotb have mishaps with Will Champlin, Adam Levine, tubas, more

We thought that we were going to have the 2014 Rose Parade covered pretty well with just a couple of articles, but then Al Roker and Hota Kotb just made it far too easy to keep discussion going for a little while longer.

We’ll start this off by saying that we get that doing live television is difficult, and that it’s impossible to know everything. But when you are on the same network as “The Voice,” for example, shouldn’t you know who all of the various contestants are who made it to the finale? The most egregious moment of the entire day came when Kotb and Roker had no idea at all who Will Champlin was, and Al went on to call him an Adam Levine “lookalike” or “wannabe.” This was very funny in itself, mostly because it came after the two had flubbed a number of things already in the parade,like there are little differences between the tuba and the sousaphones.

As for some of the other great moments, they poured effusive praise over every single act that appeared in the parade like they were the greatest things to ever walk across the earth. Tessanne Chin, for example, was treated like the second coming of Celine Dion.

On the flip side, at least the two hosts were having a pretty good time, right? It was basically like watching the Fourth Hour of “The Today Show” for more than one hour, or having that uncle who wanted to look smart, so you just nodded your head at everything they said … even when you know a good chunk of that they were saying was wrong.

So all in all, we would have to say that this was the greatest Rose Parade of all time, and we kind of want Roker and Kotb to do this show every year. The only thing better than their “Voice” meltdown / Al’s apology later for not knowing who Will was happened to be the commentary later when some cars driven by “aliens” nearly collided with each other and the audience.