College Football Blues
A college football broadcasting convention requires that any heartbreaking play made by the road team should be followed by a close-up of an ugly fan in the bleachers. I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. But each of the ten games I viewed on Saturday featured it. And if the heartbreaking play also happens to be game-deciding, expect a montage.
Maybe producers believe the victimized fans watching on television need to be reminded that what just transpired should cause them displeasure. “Show,” as the how-to manual must say, “don’t tell. Reinforce with visual imagery what is already eating at the viewer’s very soul.”
“And if you must tell,” adds a footnote, “make sure to use a lurid metaphor, modified for effect by the word literally.”
To be honest, I used to fantasize being the object of game-time close-ups. Not as the random ugly fan, but as that relevant personage—owner, parent, celebrity—chosen for recurring close-ups throughout the game. Only my own relation to the team wouldn’t be so crude and obvious. Rather, I’d be the distinguished thinker whose work is known to have influenced either the coach or star player, and through him the entire team, in a spiritual way.
Once equipped with this fantasy, my subconscious still crafts my outbursts during games with a kind of gallantry. When the camera watches your reaction to every significant play, you want to seem less hysterical, more joyful and triumphant. Watch, all ye Bruin faithful, and learn.
Anyway, I still hate the close-up of ugly fan looking petrified. For levity’s sake, they should replace it with a close-up of a pretty fan looking serenely oblivious.
