The question isn’t rhetorical and the answer is simply, “Better to watch!”

As the NBA Finals and Euro ‘08 are going on I find myself watching a lot more television than usual. However, this isn’t limited to live sports as I’ve also been watching a lot of classics such as Lakers vs Celtics from the 1980’s. Aside from the basketball being better, the one thing that stuck out in my mind is how aesthetically pleasing the broadcast was back in the day.

The main thing that irks me while watching (ESPN/ABC) sports today is the prevalance of onscreen graphics. Amazingly, ESPN puts a lot of thought into what appears onto the screen during games.

He says Bottom Lines are tweaked, depending on their location. When they’re shown on game coverage, they focus largely on that sport, while Lines on ESPNews are more detail-oriented. Lines aren’t allowed to appear during NBA game coverage.

Could have fooled me!

What compounds the issue and makes it even more annoying is that you can’t avoid paying attention to the screen. Something about text flying across the screen to where my (and your) mind has to see it. While I glance at the bottom of the screen to find out the latest college baseball results (useless to me) I then realize that I missed a KG putback dunk in which his shoulders were at the rim. Way to go ESPN! Thanks for making me miss that!!

Watch the following two videos and decide for yourself:

As you can clearly see, you can’t go 5 seconds in the second video without having the game score, series score, and a bunch of other information constantly on the screen. Is it distracting? Yes. It is necessary to know the score at all times? In my opinion, no. In any event, is it really that hard to tuck the score and time in the corner of the screen where it doesn’t detract from watching the game?

Imagine your 60″ HD 1080p displaying only the action at and, devoid of any other “stuff” that the network shoves in front of you. You get a glimpse of what that would be like during replays as the graphics aren’t on the screen during this time.

The best solution for this is to have a button on the remote control dedicated to turning these graphics on and off. Precedence has been set in video games where you can turn of commentary, adjust sound, and change the presentation as well. Eventually, though unlikely because these types of decisions are all money related, I’d like to see these features extended to live sports broadcasts as well. Is that too much to ask for?