On TV, a good answer would be any game broadcast on Fox. For the last few months, all their games have been broadcast in letterbox format. It makes it very difficult to see anything if you only have a standard-definition TV. I can barely even see the football, especially on field goal attempts. Reading the score is also nearly impossible. It’s another reason Fox shouldn’t be allowed to broadcast major sports. Just give them the scraps like figure skating and Nascar racing.
I know some of the people who worked on the software for that. They went on to create the software for the virtual first down line for football games, which become much more successful.
And now they (the same company) have virtual advertising, whereby the ads on the glass, field, etc. only appear to the home viewer.
Synchronized swimming is tough to follow. I can not tell a good team from a bad one.
Diving is tough to judge if you are not intimate with the subtle differences between a good dive and a better one.
I think golf in person is fantastic. It is completely different than on TV. Yes, it is slow, but anyone who plays golf knows that. The PGA players actually play a lot faster than your average weekend golfer - by an hour or so. On TV, you see shot after shot landing near the hole and it gets to the point where only a near holeout is exciting. In person, you get a much better feel for how good these guys really are. I was ten feet away Peter Jacobsen when he hit a chip out of pine bark mulch through some trees. He hit it really hard into the bank of the green which killed all it’s speed, and it hopped up onto the green and rolled to within inches of the cup. He was joking with the crowd the entire time. He gets up and down, and I thought to myself that I’d be lucky to in in four from that spot.
You also see how the golfers move the ball through the air to get a better landing on a banked fairway or undulating green. Rarely do they hit a straight shot - it’s either right-to-left or the opposite.
I can see how a major event like the Ryder Cup or a Major would be the worst event to go to - huge crowds make it difficult to move around, but at a regular tour event you can pretty much go where you want to and follow one player for a few holes, then get a spot behind a green and watch a few groups play their approach shots. I used to go to The International every year and there was a spot I would stand where I could see an entire par four hole, an entire par three, and see the tee shots on a par five.
(Key phrase bolded by me)
Lots of things are happening between every pitch, if you’re really paying attention. This is one of the reasons I find the game fascinating, but casual fans can understandably find the game boring on TV beacause most of the subtleties don’t translate well – especially the FOX brand of broadcasting, which is full of extreme close-ups and useless shots of fans and players’ wives.
Soccer can put a weak fan to sleep. When they are running back and forth across the midfield, it is boring. Kicked out, kicked in run 15 feet, kicked out again.
Bacteria judo, what with all the necessary microscopes and such. And the judging is invariably sub-par.