TV Isn’t Everything; It’s the Only Thing

The Super Bowl, America’s national day of prostration in front of the television set, will be played Sunday. Tickets to the game begin at $325, climbing to $400 for box and club seats. A week later, the XFL makes its debut, with thousands having ordered tickets to the made-for-TV football league.

To which I say, with all due respect, are these people out of their minds?

Let’s face it, sports have become all about television, which pays most of the freight for huge star salaries via billion-dollar broadcast and cable deals. Four networks anted up $17.6 billion over eight years for the NFL’s TV rights in 1998, and despite what they tell their accountants, that can’t be written off as an act of charity.

Soaring ticket prices, meanwhile, have made it so that relatively few people can afford to attend games unless the company’s buying. Because of the emphasis on TV, those fans who do show up watch the game on the network’s schedule and become props for the broadcast--providing B-roll footage (check out that hottie in the stands or the cute kid sleeping) producers can use to add excitement and color to this televised combination of action-adventure and real-life drama.

Granted, if sports fans generally watch games on TV out of necessity, that’s hardly a shabby seat these days, as technology keeps bringing new wrinkles to the way sports are viewed. From a production standpoint, computers superimpose a first-down marker across the football field, miniature cameras strapped to the referee literally provide a view from the middle of the action, and super-slow-motion replays key moments from every conceivable angle.

TV sets themselves, and other related systems, have witnessed their own marvels. The picture-in-picture feature, for example, allows viewers to watch one game and monitor another, perfect for those with short attention spans. So-called personal video recorders, such as TiVo and Replay, let viewers pause live action, meaning you never have to miss a play again just because the phone rang or nature called. And high-definition TV sets--prohibitively expensive now, but destined to become cheaper--provide crystal clarity with almost three-dimensional depth.

Staged by the World Wrestling Federation and NBC (which was pretty bitter about losing its NFL contract in the last round of negotiations), the XFL promises to take all of this a step further.

Michael Weissman, a broadcasting consultant to the new league, characterized the telecasts as “very viewer-friendly.” How friendly? Cameras in the locker room friendly. Dozens of players outfitted with microphones so you can hear whatever they’re saying (on a brief delay to omit obscenities). Announcers confronting players as they come off the field.

NBC is promoting this approach as “innovative all-access television coverage,” and according to NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, a vast screen inside the stadium will provide fans “a lot of what the home viewer will be watching.” In other words, even those who sit in the stands will wind up watching much of the action on television.

If that sounds odd, anyone who has spent an evening in a luxury box at Staples Center can already vouch for this experience. From that perch high above the court, surrounded by gourmet potato salad and free-flowing drinks, deals may get done and sales closed, but there isn’t a heckuva lot of basketball being watched. Moreover, the basketball that is seen often gets viewed on the TV screens in each suite, meaning big bucks are shelled out so people can trek downtown to watch a sporting event . . . on TV.

Beyond the social and networking side of this exercise--that status-conscious little thrill of gazing down upon the masses like a modern Roman Colosseum--it becomes increasingly difficult to understand from a viewer or fan perspective the rationale behind watching one of these major sports spectacles in person.

The Super Bowl, after all, has become equally renowned as a showcase for the 30-second commercials advertisers pay more than $2 million to place during the broadcast. Television breaks will be front-loaded into the game to diminish the repercussions of a lopsided outcome, which has given us the annoying pattern of having a commercial break, the kickoff, and then another commercial break, as if viewers needed a chance to catch their breath after those riveting seven seconds.

Admittedly, the major pro and collegiate sports championships do possess some history--fans who have cheered for a team such as the Lakers and passed the experience down to their children. Yet while the college game still boasts that sense of school pride and loyalty, the same can’t always be said of the NFL, where links to fans have been frayed by franchises seeking rich packages in new cities, including one of this year’s Super Bowl entries, the Baltimore Ravens, nee Cleveland Browns, and last year’s battle of two relocated teams, St. Louis versus Tennessee.

In the case of the XFL, it’s clear from the get-go that the game exists only to provide fodder for prime-time television programming. It is not in any way about sports, despite what WWF Chairman Vince McMahon may say with the same conviction in which he promotes a cage match. It is a TV show, as evidenced by McMahon’s explanation regarding the role of cheerleaders: “In the XFL, you’re really going to get to know these girls. These girls are going to become stars in and of their own right.” Uh huh. Vince Lombardi would be proud.

If the XFL has accomplished anything even before its launch, the new league has simply underscored what some disenchanted sports fans already know: that franchises no longer belong to the fans, the city they currently call home, even the lavishly compensated players and owners.

No, sports belongs to television, and the sooner everyone realizes it, the sooner we can crack open a beer, sit our butts down, decide not to worry about jogging off those 10 extra pounds this week and watch a little football just the way the television gods intended.

So if you want to share an appreciation for sports with your kids, forget about mortgaging their college tuition on tickets and teach them something that will serve them well into the future. You might want to start by telling them how to identify the computer-generated first-down marker and find the time and score on those convenient bug-sized graphics in the corner of the screen.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.