Every once in a while watching sports on TV becomes so frustrating that I have no choice but to write about it. For instance, just watching Sunday night baseball on ESPN will get you thinking about ways to mute Joe Morgan’s microphone. More often than not, it’s FOX’s national telecasts that bother me and cause me to voice my complaints. I’m guessing the same production crew that does the MLB playoffs on FOX also runs the BCS games on FOX because we’re encountering the same problems. In the MLB playoffs on FOX, they show the viewer everything BUT the action. They’ll show a close up of the manager, the pitcher, the fielders, and of course the fans, before they cut back to the pitch. If you’re lucky you’ll get back in time to see what the batter did. Same thing with their telecasts of the BCS games, specifically the Fiesta Bowl.
Every minute that wasn’t between the snap and tackle FOX was filling us with something to watch other than the game. Have a taste of the fans why don’t you? Here, here’s a band shot (the unofficial count is over 300). Let’s show a replay of nothing. Check out Colt McCoy up close. Take a peak at Jim Tressel. Oh wait, there’s a snap coming? Better get back to it. Incompletion, back to the same routine. And as if having one sideline reporter wasn’t enough (and you know how unnecessary I feel they are), they have two so we can get double the useless information!
Apparently FOX doesn’t understand that fans are interested in watching the play develop from the huddle to the whistle. We like to see adjustments and what schemes both sides of the ball are running. We like to see the whole field and see the setup of a play so we don’t miss any action. Really, if I could equate what FOX TV does to playoff (and Saturday) MLB, and what they do with the BCS games, to any actual situation, it would be like watching a baseball team throw a ball around the horn after every single pitch. I don’t have A.D.D. and neither does the majority of the population. Why do they treat the audience like we do? Perhaps these issues have something to do with the poor ratings the games have been getting on FOX.
