The problem is TV and money, not just TV

"The view a fan gets at home should not be better than that of the fan in the worst seat in the ballpark." -- Baseball commissioner Ford Frick (quote from "Monday Night Mayhem" by Marc Gunther and Bill Carter)

Although I didn't specifically remember it coming from Frick until I looked it up, I thought of the quote almost immediately when I read Will Leitch's Sports on Earth piece about people not attending football games after a weekend in which three of the four NFL playoff games where threatened by blackouts.

Leitch writes:

"There are many reasons for this, most of them apparent: Games are too expensive to attend, it's often cold, the beer is lousy and overpriced, football games have a dramatically higher lout-to-normal-human ratio than any other sport (and perhaps any other recreational activity, with the possible exception of a Wall Street bachelor party). But the main reason, clearly, is television. Put aside expense, or possible proximity to this person. Football is a sport that is more fun to watch on television than it is in person, and I'm not even sure it's all that close."

I agree ... and I don't.

First of all, the TV-versus-at-the-game issue is not limited to football, and it's nothing new, as the Frick quote above points out. After all, he was baseball commissioner during the 1950s and 1960s.

With the possible exception of hockey because it can be hard to see the puck, despite Fox's best efforts, any sport is better on TV than it is in person and always has been. I remember when my father went to his first NASCAR race in Dover several years ago; he said one thing that took some getting used to was that he wouldn't be able to see a replay when an accident happened.

If you come across an old game on ESPN Classic, MLB Network or elsewhere, even those prehistoric broadcasts make for a better viewing experience than at the game itself. Since I was watching the "Studio 42 with Bob Costas" interview with Reggie Jackson this morning, I'll use his three-homer game in the 1977 World Series as an example.



With a few exceptions (perhaps the people in the right field stands), hardly anyone at Yankee Stadium that night had a better view of what happened that night than the folks watching on TV. But the people at the stadium where there, and they can brag on that for the rest of their lives.

I wrote about the concept of "being there" a little more than a year ago, but being at the ballpark, stadium, arena, rink, racetrack or pitch is the reason to go, even if nothing historic happens. It's about the experience.

The problem is that we may have reached a tipping point, that during a time when television can present the game in more and different ways to people in the comfort of their living rooms than ever before, the cost of being there has maybe, just maybe outstripped the allure of being there.