Please Stop "Innovating"

Fox Sports like to be "innovative" in its presentation of games and events.  They are the ones that created the "Fox Box", the graphic that started out in one of the corners of the screen that always showed the score and the time remaining for football, or the inning for baseball.  That score bug was then expanded to include the down and distance.  Eventually dots were added to represent how many timeouts were left in football--or where runners were positioned in baseball.  Then the box could be switched to show team stats, or player stats or pitch counts or the last pitch speed.  It has evolved in such a way that you don't have to pay attention to the game at all--and just glance at the "Fox Box" and you can get all the info you need.

Then came the "yellow line" for football.  Thinking that fans had no idea where the first down was, Fox decide it was going to overlay a bright yellow line on the field.  Just in case the down and distance in the Fox Box, the chains on the side line, the orange flag that is placed on the sideline at the first down yardage and the announcer saying "They need to make it to the 39 to get a first down" didn't clarify the "line to gain".  That led to imposing a "field goal line"--letting us know how far downfield the team needs to get for their kicker to attempt a career-long field goal.

And who can forget Fox's "glowing puck" innovation?  The National Hockey League was forced to use special pucks that produced a glowing effect on the TV broadcast--ostensibly to make it easy for viewers to see.  When the puck was passed or shot it would leave a fake red streak across the screen, like an asteroid entering earth's atmosphere.  Unfortunately, if the puck came along the near side boards, it would look like it was glowing in the stands.

Now that Fox has broadcast rights to the US Open golf tournament, they have brought us another "innovation": microphones in the cups.  I thought the sound effect was fake, like Fox thought maybe viewers didn't know the ball disappeared because it went into the cup.  But analyst Brad Faxon insisted in Twitter exchanges with frustrated golf fans last night that it really is the sound of the ball going in.  He claims the special "cup mikes" are supposed to pick up conversations between players and caddies as they read the greens.

But I was thinking what it would have been like if the stupid sound effect had been used by other networks during some of the greatest made putts in history.  Like when Jack Nicklaus drained a birdie on 17 during his miraculous win in the 1986 Masters, with Verne Lundquist's iconic call:

"Maybe......(clink, clink, clink) YES SIR!!!"

Or Gary Koch's famous call of Tiger Woods' double breaking long putt on the island green 17th hole in the Players Championship:

"That's better than most........better than most......(clink, clink, clink) BETTER THAN MOST!!!"

Every once in a while, you get to see a classic sports broadcast of an historic game and the screen is wonderfully clear of graphics, score crawls, floating strike zones and far less piped-in noises.  It's refreshing--almost like watching the game in person--even it it's not in 4k hi-definition.