TV Sports Producers: Enough with the POV Shots

As a red-blooded American Man, I love to watch football on TV, especially college football. (Note to those outside the U.S.: I'm referring here to American football, not soccer football, which is a fine sport it its own way, but which I will not watch because it's as exciting as watching grass grow.) And one thing I've noticed lately is that technology is starting to absolutely screw up this sport for TV viewers.

Now, don't misunderstand me; technology, as a whole, is a wonderful thing. I'd hate to see what our world would be like if, for example, we had to use natural substances such as wood or stone for things like artificial hearts, or TV remotes, or home-building materials. Scary thoughts, indeed.

But technology can be misused, and misused grievously. I'm thinking here of things like the computer animation program that made Jar-Jar Binks possible. And now, I'm seeing it misused in college football broadcasts.

Several years ago, broadcasters began stringing robotic cameras on wires alongside the field. This gave us, the home viewers, better angles and images than we'd ever dreamed we'd get while we were watching the game. Before, we had to take an announcer's word for the extent of a player's injury ("We didn't get a good shot of it, but I think he pulled a groin muscle on that play"); with the new camera technology, the player's groin was lunging into our living rooms, and we got a full-color view of the linebacker's helmet slamming into the running back's crotch just before the running back crumpled into a whimpering ball on the turf.

So if you enjoyed lunging groins, the new camera technology was great. Then, suddenly (I think it happened during a Super Bowl game), the cameras were strung on wires ACROSS the field, so now, without leaving the comfort of our easy chairs, we could fly over the huddle DURING THE GAME, watch the offensive team break the huddle and approach the line of scrimmage, and see our Fantasy Football tailback sprain his ankle as he got into his stance, thus ending any hope we had of winnng the $100 pot.

Now, though, football broadcasters have taken these weird camera angles too far. Take kickoffs, for example. Watch any televised college football game, and I guarantee you at least once you'll see a sequence of shots that looks like this:

1) One camera will pan over the stadium while the score is displayed on the screen.
2) The view will switch to a close-up shot of the kicker as he sets the ball on the tee, wanders back about 10 yards, raises his hand to indicate to the referee that he applied deodorant in the locker room, and then rushes forward to kick the ball.
3) (And this is where it starts driving me crazy:) You'll suddenly be looking at the kick receiver's butt from the back of the end zone, with the camera apparently sitting on a blade of grass, because it looks like the shot has been framed by a worm.
4) The receiver will catch the ball and start running upfield, but THE CAMERA ANGLE DOESN'T CHANGE. You, the viewer, are still stuck back here behind the endzone, watching the game on WormCam. You have no frame of reference for how well (or how poorly) the return is going, because all you can see is the rapidly diminishing butt of the receiver, and some frenzied activity in front of him. At some point, the receiver will be tackled, and THEN the viewpoint will change, and you learn that multiple exciting things happened on the return, including the first triple-axel somersault ever performed by a kick returner just before he was leveled by the most amazing tackle the commentators have ever seen. You, of course, saw none of this, because the producer running the show decided that particular return would be shown via the WormCam, back here behind the end zone.

If I wanted terrible views of the game, I'd actually go to the game, where I always manage to sit behind the biggest, drunkest guy in the stadium, who insists on wearing the largest foam hat in the history of the universe, which he waves in the air while yelling "WHOOOOOOO!" for four straight hours. But because I decided to stay home and save $400 that a ticket scalper desperately needed to send his daughter to college, I THOUGHT I'd actually get to see the game. Instead, because sports producers insist on misusing technology, I get WormCam.

Tune in next time, when we'll discuss another annoying misuse of TV sports technology: Showing Notre Dame football games.

 

(c) 2012 John Puckett