SICK OF SPORTS TV PRODUCTION VALUES

by Thermocaster, The Meaningful Collateral

Whoever came up with the M.O. for sports television broadcasts hopefully was drummed out of the business soon afterwards --- and if that person has a son or a daughter or a grandchild working in sports television, they deserve to be fired, or reassigned to the Travel Channel like Kirsten Gum (hopefully without that whole DUI thing).

There are lots of problems with the way we're forced to watch sports on television today --- the unconscionably bad announcing, the stupid graphics, the over-dramatization, the hype --- but by far, the biggest, most irritating aspect of live sports on TV these days is this incessant need that the networks have to constantly give us shots of a player's family member/significant other/screw toy throughout the game.

The most recent occurrence of this is the Jessica Simpson camera-pimping that FOX pulled off during the Dallas/Philadelphia drudge-fest on Sunday. Yes, I admit that the offenses for both teams were abjectly awful. Yes, I'll be the first to say that Jessica Simpson is easy on the eyes. But after about the third or fourth close-up shot into the luxury box, that aspect had run its course. Yes, guys, we get it --- she's a bad actress with D-cups and she's in the building. Oh, and she's wearing a pink Cowboys jersey. Can we please get back to the game now? SHE'S RUINING FOOTBALL!

Unfortunately, the vast majority of these crowd shot celebrities aren't nearly as attractive as Jessica... and get shown far more often. Yes, we're all aware that Brett Favre's wife had a heroic battle with breast cancer. No, we don't need to see her 29 times a game. We don't really need to see her once, even. Yes, we're aware that Tubby Smith loves his wife...do we need to see Tubby's wife EVERY SINGLE TIME THAT TUBBY'S TEAMS ARE ON TELEVISION???

Speaking of Tubby's teams, his old team played UAB this past weekend, and we saw much the same thing... only this time, the "crowd shot celebrity" was UAB player Robert Vaden's mother. It was sweet to see Vaden's momma rooting on her son from the stands. But showing her incessantly throughout UAB's run in the second half crossed the line into sheer overkill.

You'd think that ESPN, with its myriad of cable channel offerings, would create a channel that's dedicated simply to letting people watch SPORTS, without all the soap-operatic garbage that producers and announcers see fit to pile onto live broadcasts. We could call this channel "ESPN Raw", even though Vince McMahon would probably sue the WWL over that. Now there's a fight where you root for mutual death.