Crossing The Line
February 1, 2005
by Michael Walls

I’m starting to feel like the NFL and Fox think I’m retarded.

Football use to be the type of sport that looked like a mindless, simple sport, where gigantic men push each other around, then pile up on each other at the end of each play. When in reality, Football it’s actually quite complicated – with hundreds of different play possibilities, intricate rules and a complex general premise.

You can explain basketball is about 6 words – throw the ball in the basket. Baseball is a bit more complex – you hit the ball, you catch the ball, you throw the ball.

Football has it own language, points are gathered in increments of 6, 3, 2, or 1, coaches can throw flags on the field, and some players are not allowed to even touch the ball. The complexities of football use to be the attraction for me.

But now, Fox has taken away a lot of those complexities by filling up my TV screen with retard-proof graphics and animations that, in my opinion, is distracting from the actual game.

Remember the days when you use to watch a football game with your buddies? Remember when you’d watch Barry Sanders power his way through a defensive line, looking like he was short of the first down, then surge that extra yard ahead? There was no yellow line on the TV screen to show how close he was. We had to remember how many yards he needed, or had to look at the first down markers on the sidelines to judge how close he was. Just like the actual players and coaches and fans in the stadium have to do now – because they don’t have the yellow line by which to judge. Back then, we TV viewers had to wait for the guys with the chains to come out and measure for the first down. There use to be suspense. Drama.

Nowadays, there’s no more drama in measuring for the first down. Now, even my mother knows it’s a first down before the coach does.

It’s taken a couple of years, but I’ve gotten use to the yellow line. After all, with all the different camera angles and close-up shots, it was difficult to keep track of where players were on the field. The drama is gone, but it’s taken some of the work out of waiting to find out if it’s a first down or not.

But now, Fox has crossed the line. Now, we have a blue line to indicate the line of scrimmage, and a red line to indicate the optimal field goal range of the team’s kicker. Then, on top of those invisible lines we also have a gigantic arrow in the middle of the field (pointing in the direction the offense is suppose to be going) with the current down and yards to go. The NFL on Fox now looks like a PowerPoint presentation with some football players running around it.

First off, why do we need to show the down and yards to go? It’s already up in the corner next to the score. Second, why do we need an arrow to show which way they’re going? If you can’t figure out that the guy with the football (the quarterback), with the half dozen guys in front of him (wearing the same uniforms) desperately trying to keep another half dozen guys (in different uniforms) from trying to kill him, is looking to move the ball past the guys trying to kill him – then you shouldn’t be watching.

The blue line indicating line of scrimmage is also not necessary. (By the way, that space between the offensive line and defensive line, is the line of scrimmage.) I don’t care about the line of scrimmage. The line of scrimmage means nothing. You don’t get any rewards for reaching or not reaching the line of scrimmage. Only the first down marker counts.

And forget about the red line indicating the kicker’s field goal range. Absolutely pointless.

I guess the argument for all of these visual enhancements are – it helps the viewer know what’s going on. But if you need visual graphics to figure out what’s going on, then you’re not really a football fan.

So the real motivation behind all of this must be to attract the non-football fans. To make the game visually interesting to those who might otherwise just walk by the TV.

This theory was realized when my wife sat down on the couch for five minutes during the NFC Championship game between the Eagles and Falcons.

“Hey, look at the big arrow. That’s neat. How do they do that?” I don’t know.

“Can the players see it?” No.

“What’s the yellow line mean?” First down marker.

“Can the players see that?” No.

“Then why is it there?” Good question.

Mission accomplished. Fox has just succeeded in giving people who are not interested in Football something to talk about.

Officially the NFL and Fox probably claim it allows people not intimately familiar with the game to become better educated with the particulars of the sport. But considering I never really recall any of the commentators mentioning what the lines represented – they left it up to me to explain it to my wife.

I guess all of this just goes hand-and-hand with things like the Super Bowl halftime show, microphones on the players, cameras on the field, and the over-the-top advertising. It’s all targeted towards those viewers who have less of an interest in football, and more of an interest in the peripherals surrounding the game.

What’s next? Animated versions of Phil Simms and Chris Collinsworth?

(Michael Walls is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine and would like to see a visually enhanced John Madden and Al Michaels in the lower left corner of my TV screen at all times during the game.)