ESPN B.S. Coverage

[Brandon Howe]

And what i hate about ESPN is they'll be showing a great 3-wide battle or something for 10th on back or something, but then in the middle of it they show the leader, Kyle Busch, 10 seconds ahead of 2nd place Carl Edwards/Joey Lagano/Brad K.

 

[undedavenger]

And this is what happens when you have Japanese People call a Nascar race :twitcy:.

YouTube - Coke Zero 400 Final Lap Crash - Japanese Commentary

Hey, those guys showed more excitement and emotion than any America commentators I've seen. Of course, I don't speak Japanese, so he may have been screaming at his cohost for yanking his crank in the booth or something...

 

[JeffJordan]

The Japanese made this country great. They did not make that video any better.

 

[undedavenger]

It aches a little bit to know that only a select few will know what the hardest crash in NASCAR history looked like from a decent angle.

And that's what ticks me off. Can you imagine the network having cut away when Jerry Rice caught that deep touchdown in the Super Bowl? Or cutting away from McGwire's 70th home run to show some guy in the stands wearing a beer hat? No. Other sports have footage dating back to the 40's, NASCAR will always have a jumble of bad angles for any race ESPN covered.

 

[Brandon Howe]

Hey, those guys showed more excitement and emotion than any America commentators I've seen. Of course, I don't speak Japanese, so he may have been screaming at his cohost for yanking his crank in the booth or something...

Hey, I didn't post that... I just reposted what some guy posted but i fixed the links. I think it was ryan or something who posted it.

 

[David24]

And that's what ticks me off. Can you imagine the network having cut away when Jerry Rice caught that deep touchdown in the Super Bowl? Or cutting away from McGwire's 70th home run to show some guy in the stands wearing a beer hat? No. Other sports have footage dating back to the 40's, NASCAR will always have a jumble of bad angles for any race ESPN covered.

Heidi Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

lol

 

[JeffJordan]

Ah, the Heidi Game.

I know people who are still pissed off at that.

 

[undedavenger]

Yeah, but the guys at the stadium were still rolling cameras, so if Canton wants to show it, they can get it. My point is that having ESPN be so weak with the actual camera angles and shot selection means a lot of interesting (and sometimes, ultimately race-deciding) details may be lost forever instead of recorded. I think 20 fans with camcorders scattered around the track could do a better job.

 

[MillsLayne]

And that's what ticks me off. Can you imagine the network having cut away when Jerry Rice caught that deep touchdown in the Super Bowl? Or cutting away from McGwire's 70th home run to show some guy in the stands wearing a beer hat? No. Other sports have footage dating back to the 40's, NASCAR will always have a jumble of bad angles for any race ESPN covered.

Difference is that in ball sports, all the action is happening in one particular spot. In racing, the action is all over the place and is constant, unlike football or baseball. And yeah, ESPN dropped the ball on the Sadler crash and I think another one from a recent race, I can't argue that. But with the Sadler crash, we have seen the actual impact, just not the whole thing.

Yeah, but the guys at the stadium were still rolling cameras, so if Canton wants to show it, they can get it. My point is that having ESPN be so weak with the actual camera angles and shot selection means a lot of interesting (and sometimes, ultimately race-deciding) details may be lost forever instead of recorded. I think 20 fans with camcorders scattered around the track could do a better job.

Yeah, if you want out of focus and shaky shots the whole time, then go for it.

 

[Fisha695]

The angles ESPN uses are the same every other network uses and the same at many tracks that have been used before. About the only angle that I haven't seen any networks use recently is the one where there is a stationary camera hanging on a pole over the track shooting down the back stretch. I mean yeah they have cameras that shoot down the long stretches now but they are moveable cameras that don't just shoot a shot of the backstretch.


I honestly think that there is or was footage by the cameras of Sadlers wreck but I feel NASCAR (who owns all the footage) said "That's not gonna be shown", as they didn't want to show a possible catastrophic failure of the cars chassis on TV. Once the decision was made to not show that footage it suddenly couldn't show up like "Well we have this footage in super-slow-mo where you can see the engine ripping away from the chassis of the car", once the decision to not-show the footage they had was made they had to 'have no footage'.

Yeah call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever but I truly belive that to be the case, and I feel that it happens in other sports as well & more often then we realize.

 

[amidst tundra]

Sadler's crash happened at the exact same moment as Kurt Busch's on one of the largest tracks NASCAR uses. I'm not one hundred percent convinced any camera would have been focused innocuously into the middle of the pack at that instance, I don't think NASCAR censored it because had there been a cameraman on the ball or a director that shot would have been up in an instance. Clint Malarchuk and Joe Theismann were not censored and neither was Kenny Brack or Greg Moore... you simply don't have that option in sports. Personally had sadler been badly injured I wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway... I couldn't bring myself to watch replays of the Brack accident until I knew he was OK, and that was a long time after.

 

[phillipw72364]

I think ESPN does a great job compared to what it use to be when I was growing up. Try watching a race after it has already started. I can also remember some of them being taped delayed and shown 2 weeks later then you only got to see the first 10 laps and the last 10 laps. Things have gotten alot better.

 

[4WideRacing]

Technology got alot better. ESPN compared to FOX is very bad.

 

[dalejrgamer]

To be honest, I'd rather watch a race with no graphics whatsoever. Maybe a watermark showing how many laps left, but that's it.

 

[JeffJordan]

Sadler's crash happened at the exact same moment as Kurt Busch's on one of the largest tracks NASCAR uses. I'm not one hundred percent convinced any camera would have been focused innocuously into the middle of the pack at that instance, I don't think NASCAR censored it because had there been a cameraman on the ball or a director that shot would have been up in an instance. Clint Malarchuk and Joe Theismann were not censored and neither was Kenny Brack or Greg Moore... you simply don't have that option in sports. Personally had sadler been badly injured I wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway... I couldn't bring myself to watch replays of the Brack accident until I knew he was OK, and that was a long time after.

In NASCAR, they have a few cameramen per driver (enough to get every view on track), and a lot of TV cameras that just cover the best thing they see. Sadler's camerman, nor any of the TV camermen did their job correctly, as we have no decent footage of NASCAR history.

 

[moppenheimer]

I dont really think they waste camera men like that JJ....that would mean having at least 100 camera men at the track, if they did that they would put onboards on every car, that would be cheaper.

I am by no means an expert on that subject, but that doesn't sound right to me....

 

[Fisha695]

To be honest, I'd rather watch a race with no graphics whatsoever. Maybe a watermark showing how many laps left, but that's it.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4ApVo1FAQ]YouTube - DTM 2010 - Round 3 - Eurospeedway 1/8[/ame]
Like this DTM race at Pocono.... err I mean Eurospeedway lol . And hey it's ESPN :lol:

I dont really think they waste camera men like that JJ....that would mean having at least 100 camera men at the track, if they did that they would put onboards on every car, that would be cheaper.

I am by no means an expert on that subject, but that doesn't sound right to me....

There is about 75 cameras for the normal ESPN broadcast. 3 are in the Pit Studio, I'd assume there are 2 or 3 in the Broadcast booth, and there are a handful that are "mobile" for pit road, the garage, etc. So that'd leave probaly about 60 to cover the actual on-track stuff.

As for onboards on Every car, that should be mandatory. With how technology works today there should be two roof cams, one facing the front & one facing the back. Put them both in the same pod, two separate pods, a fin like they used on the trucks, heck even the T-Bar setup it doesn't matter there should be a forward & rearword facing roof cam on every car in the race.

Here is a "Behind the Scenes" article about ESPN's NASCAR coverage that was written this past week. A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT ESPN'S LIVE NASCAR COVERAGE

 

[moppenheimer]

Ah, okay, that makes sense.