BCS in 3-D. Or maybe not.
After the first quarter of the 3-D showing of the BCS Championship football game between Oklahoma and Florida on Thursday night, after 15 minutes of low-slung camera angles that made a 15-yard run look like three, that made Gators quarterback Tim Tebow's thighs look thick as semi-truck wheels, after countless moments where the screen went out of focus until you had to look away or feel queasy, one orange-shirted man dropped his black, wrap-around 3-D viewing glasses on the table where he had picked them up earlier and said, "You can give these to someone else. I'm finished with this. Where's a sports bar?"
At least the man, who ran faster than an Oklahoma tailback out of Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theater Complex, hadn't paid to see this presentation. This one was by invitation only. But in 81 theaters across the country, including Apple Valley and Del Mar, there were paying customers ($18-$22 a ticket) who chose to forsake their big screens, their flat screens, their HDs, to experience football in three-dimensional glory.
There are kinks to be worked out. Last month, at the same theater, the NFL presented a Chargers-Raiders game in 3-D. While there were glitches -- loss of the satellite transmission for a few minutes being the most noticeable -- the overall experience was memorable. The speed of the game, the utter hugeness of the players, the sense that an offensive tackle might just sit on your popcorn -- seemed worth maybe paying extra for.
With different cameramen, in a different stadium, with different shadows and angles, this BCS game, the first-ever 3-D telecast of a live sporting event available to any paying customer, left at least that orange-shirted man ready to leave early.
Me too. I stuck it out for three quarters but my eyes hurt and the absence of graphics like how much time was left, the inability to judge whether a player had made a catch, stayed in bounds, picked up a first down or missed getting it by five yards, was eventually too frustrating. The 3-D production's announcers, Kenny Albert and Tim Ryan, didn't fill in enough of the gaps either.
Listening to the fourth-quarter radio call of ESPN's Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit was blessedly informative. And I hope the orange-shirted man found his sports bar.
-- Diane Pucin
