FOX Loves To Make You Watch
This past week had several rough injuries, and boy did FOX really make sure you saw every possible second of them.
I made a comic once about how we have a compulsion to watch sports injuries. I still agree with that comic, it’s hard to not want to see what happened to someone at least once. But once is really all you need. You watch it once, wince, shudder, then share it with your friends and never watch it again. Maybe you return to it years later with injury nostalgia, watch it again, and wonder why you just did that.
But FOX has a problem. They love to just keep showing it in as many angles as possible, over and over again throughout the game and even through other games. During the Hawks/Rams experience Russ came away at one point holding his hand out and his middle finger looked wrong. Naturally, the camera crew gave us a slow-mo replay of Russ connecting with Aaron Donald’s arm during a throw. Whelp, there it is. Now we know what happened. He hit his hand on Donald’s arm, and now his finger is gross. That’s all we needed to see. FOX didn’t feel like it was all we needed to see. FOX wanted us to feel the finger dislocating in pulse-pounding detail, over and over and over. Almost every commercial break after Russ left was like “Well if you are wondering why Geno Smith is in the game, here you go *cut to Russ shredding his finger and holding it out as it flops around*”.
Honestly, though a finger dislocation is pretty gross, it didn’t hold a candle to what came late on Sunday afternoon during the Giants game. First, we got to see Saquon Barkley destroy his ankle repeatedly. Hey, wanna know what happened to Saquon? Here you go, let’s do a zoom on his foot twisting sideways as he lands on a defender. Try and guess which tendons are straining right before your eyes! Then Daniel Jones got concussed, and boy did we see how concussed he got. Let’s zoom in on his dead, lifeless confused eyes. Let’s slow-motion go to commercial over him drooling and stumbling. Let’s remind you of the hit repeatedly.
If someone ever dies on the field we need to pray that it happens on any of the other networks because if it happens on FOX we will see it in graphic detail as Joe Buck moans “oh wow that looks bad” while Troy Aikman goes “That’s right Joe”.
Meanwhile, congrats to the Seattle Kraken on getting their first win! HOCKEY
Worst injuries I’ve seen as Napoleon McCallum’s knee bending almost 90 degrees the wrong way and, of course, Joe Theismann. Ironically, I’ve seen more horrible looking injuries in NBA games, than in NFL games… lots of broken legs flopping around, looking disgusting. And then there’s the NHL… while you really can’t see the broken bones too well in an NHL game, you can definitely see when someone takes a puck to the face. And then there’s incidents like Richard Zednik and Clint Malarchuk. If you’ve never seen the video of Clint Malarchuk, and you’re curious, well… you’ve been warned.
My top five worst to watch are:
1. Dak’s foot being held on by skin and nothing else
2. Kevin Ware/Paul George (basically the same injury and circumstances, so they’re together)
3. Willis McGahee’s knee doing a JFK
4. Alex Smith
5. Any non-contact Achilles tear where the player plants their foot and their calf rolls up like a window shade.
An oldie, but Lawrence Taylor destroying Joe Theismann’s leg also has to be right up there.
What about Ryan Shazier?
Mma silva flap of skin. Eminem even rapped about it. “Butterfly”
Johnny Knox having his body bent backward in 2011.
Tim Krumrie’s leg in Superbowl XXIV.
Lower leg was just flopping around in the air while he still made a play.
Only reason Roger Craig cracked 100 yards that day.
Hi Dave! I hope you are going healthier and everything is fine with you
My wife and I have a discussion, is that dog a husky or a border collie?
It’s a border collie
It seems the split for replays of a boneheaded play, questionable flag, or injury is so often either “here’s 5 replays from different angles” or “here’s literally nothing, we’re just going to talk about nonsense instead”. I’d like something somewhere a little more in between these, guys.
Are you predicting a massive exodus off the ‘Hawks bandwagon than onto the shiny new one?
As Seahawks fan I wouldn’t mind that. The online community has been super toxic for years now, with people who only want to crap on the team even when they win, who hate Russell Wilson for no reason, who act like every game is already lost all week long and then complain when we win by a single score. This fanbase used to be fun but now it just makes me tired.
“the online community has been super toxic”
Is there any online community that isn’t?
I play a game with a fairly friendly community. We bust balls when others die, but we’re pretty good otherwise.
This one
Cutting live to Thiesmancam…
Dale Earnhardt.
For those of you who weren’t watching it live — they replayed the crash several times, even his in-car camera view. I can’t remember when it actually came out during the broadcast that he had died, but they certainly were showing a lot of replays after the other drivers came over and were waving frantically for medical help.
IIRC that was on Fox, too.
I didn’t watch motorsport again until “Drive to Survive” came out, but Roman Grosjean has turned me off again.
(I know it’s not football)
Reminds me of the weight lifting accident in the 2008 Olympics where the network shows replays in every angles.
HAIL TO THE KING.
Henry is just doing things that… Man.
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