Anyone else tired of the ticker?

I lived in Charlotte, NC, in 1996. I mention this because though that was a Kentucky Wildcat championship season (still one of the best NCAA teams I ever saw), their games were not readily available to me because I lived in enemy territory. So as disappointing as it is to recollect missing that game, at the time it wasn't that strange I was at work (or at the movies) instead of watching the SEC Tournament final.

So I come home from work that night (March 10, 1996), pop on the ESPN and along the bottom of the screen was the ticker of basketball scores. I still recall the first time that SEC final score came along and when seeing that Mississippi State had beaten Kentucky, I thought how odd it was that the ticker had the score wrong. I mean, how is it possible that Kentucky could've lost that game? Hours later, a full day of watching sports (or whatever) I was blown away that the ticker still had the score wrong.

In fact, UK did lose that game (*) and I still can't believe it. Indeed, that is probably the most surprising loss in all of my decades of watching UK basketball. So surprising was this loss that in fact my first instinct (indeed, my second and third, as well) was to blame the scoreboard rather than just accepting that my beloved squad dropped an easy one.

I tell that story to show my fealty to the ticker. I actually have a discernible sports memory related to the ticker itself, which was still a pretty brand new invention in 1996. Hey, man, back in the day a slow crawl of sports scores across the bottom of the screen was better than the moon landing! It made one feel up to date, enlightened about things that actually matter (like whether the Jets were able to cover against the Dolphins). I'd happily rank the tinker among the better innovations of our media age, in its day it gave so much info with so little effort. But like the VCR, another good innovation from back in the day, we have outgrown it.

Now we have laptops, smart phones, smart watches, smart eyeglasses, pads, pods and Twitter. Now we have no shortage of places to get sports scores. The sports ticker is nothing but a nuisance now, a vestigial leftover of a time that no longer exists. Everything has gotten better, faster, more abundant...

...but there is one thing that has not exponentially grown in the last 20 years: time to watch sports. Watching my baseball, basketball and soccer on tape delay allows me to watch more sports by fitting the games into my schedule instead of jamming myself into a space-time continuum that benefits me less.

Sports is still considered a must-see live spectacle but I find that's really only true of football. (**) Everything else can wait, which works just fine--as long as I don't know the score of the game before I sit down to watch it!

The ticker tells me of things I do not want to know. It takes up space on the screen. It attracts my busy eyes which is what the football game I'm watching ought to be doing. It busily reminds me at all times that I don't need it for anything!

I'm talking to you, ABC Sports: I don't need the damn ticker! I know you think you're being cool by pummeling me with European soccer scores but actually you are only ruining my enjoyment of those matches. I know you think you're performing some kind of service by giving a steady stream of baseball scores, but I'd really rather you didn't. If I wanted to know them, they are readily available to me. You are not helping me enjoy sports, ABC, you are punishing me for watching your sport first. (***)



(*) Kentucky just missed the chance to avenge that loss to Mississippi State in the NCAA finals, but Syracuse hung on and made it to the title game instead. Oh, man, UK would've beaten Mississippi State by 400 points!
(**) Also the NCAA tourney, World Cup soccer, the Masters--which just goes to show that the extraordinary events in other sports are roughly equal to every day ordinary football games. I don't know how to explain it but I've long believed that football is as big as anything in America.
(***) Punishing the customer works in some industries but I bet sports entertainment isn't one of them.