Fancier is not always better

I should tread lightly on this one, because ESPN is--if all goes according to plan--my future employer. That being said, they are not perfect.

ESPN is planning to unveil a 3D TV station network in 2010. We have officially reached the point where we know more about technology than we have a reason to know. Call me a purist, but I think that ESPN has no real business making a 3D station. No doubt I watch HDTV over a grainy black-and-white model, but there is a point where "improvement" and "innovation" go a bit too far.

For example, this sentence is boring.
Because this sentence us bold, it stands out more
this sentence looks really cool, and was probably one of the first things you noticed when you loaded the page, but it is a bit tedious to read such a long sentence while it's flashing
This sentence has way too much going on and is very hard to read

Bottom line is, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. 3D is amazing in movies. Take Avatar, for example.

Let's face it, Jim Tressel could have written that plot. It was stale, formulaic, and predictable. There were--and this is a true story--three or four times where I literally predictedverbatim what the next line was going to be.

But the movie was a superhit, because it was visually stunning. The masterful cinematography and use of technology made the movie amazing, even though the plot was--well not amazing.

But a World Cup match is not a fictitious war between 8 foot tall blue aliens and trigger-happy marines.

A World Cup match is reality. What is so captivating about watching professional sports is that it is real. It's actually happening. I don't need to see the ball flying out of my TV screen towards my face--I'm already equally captivated by the precision with which the ball was sent spinning just over the top of the wall and into the corner of the net.

Pro sports is not fiction. The Beautiful Game is beautiful because it leaves people speechless. Shown in 3D, it loses its grandeur because it is no longer reality.

You want to watch something in 3D, fine--but stay way from my sports or I'll start writing everything like this. And when we do video-podcasts, they will be shot with some obnoxious video affects--perhaps that photobooth affect that makes the image look like it's in a comic book?