Today he discussed why recording games on the DVR makes for a lesser experience than watching the games live. The gist of his argument is that drama is lost as games leave the present and enter the recent for rational and irrational reasons. This is true; you wouldn’t purchase a UFC card, record it, and then watch it 3 hours after it ended. If that was your plan you might as well just wait for the DVD. But the difference between my view and Klosterman’s view is the social aspect. If I’m watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals on a Tuesday night, I can do one of two things. I can walk ¾ of a mile down to the bar and watch it with some friends with beers. Or, I can DVR it.
Why can’t I just watch it live at the house? Simple - there is just too much other stuff to do at the house. I can watch movies. I can play Playstation. I can watch other shows I’ve recorded. I can watch other shows that are live. I can smoke the hookah. I can play with my dog. I can write, study, do laundry, go for a run, listen to music, talk on the phone, talk to my girlfriend, make a sandwich, read a book, or, god forbid, I can go to sleep. All of these things sound better than listening to Magic Johnson ramble about “winning time” or Charles Barkley calling out paying fanbase X for being the worst fans in the league. I’m a fairly intelligent person. I’ve watched basketball for a long time. Hell, I even PLAYED basketball for a long time. I don’t need people to explain to me what I’m seeing. And I don’t need to watch commercials.
"Winning Time!"
I freely admit that watching a sporting event on the DVR is a less than desirable experience. It’s honestly a lot of work. If someone could invent an auto DVR that edits on the fly and turns live games into episodes of “NBA’s Greatest Games”, eliminating free throws (except at the end), timeouts, inbounds, halftime, and Jeff Van Gundy, it would catch on immediately. But I don’t have three hours I’m willing to spend watching these games, so this is what I do now:
If a game starts at 9, I start watching at 10:30, and I catch up with the live feed with about six minutes remaining. I call it the 90 minute rule, and I use it with all sporting events I’m watching at the house.
This solves most of the problems Klosterman mentioned. His article never mentions the possibility of using the DVR to start a game late and catch up with real time. His problem only mentioned that it is less than desirable to watch a game in its entirety after the fact, which I won’t do. You still get the drama of the live game when it counts, and you still know what happened to bring the game to that point. The only type of person this doesn’t work for is the irrational karma fan, the fan that feels they have some control over the outcome of the game from their rooting interest. This fan generally watches in a social setting, thus the DVR concept does not apply to these sorts of fans anyway.
There are simply too many entertainment options, and too few hours in the day, for the time commitments the big three leagues ask of you to follow their games live. The NBA is actually better than the NFL and MLB in this department. I only used them as an example because it’s the most current.
I love Chuck Klosterman and I’m glad his take is going to be more rooted in the mainstream now that grantland.com has launched. I like that he takes chances and writes about goofy things. But I feel he missed about the DVR and sports. The DVR is a tool that makes serious following of sports possible for people that don’t write about sports for a living. Without it, I don’t get to watch the NBA Finals or MMA cards on cable. Without it, I don’t get to watch four or five NFL games each week for the sake of fantasy research. The DVR is a tool to increase the volume of sports watched, and it should be treated accordingly.
"The Miama Heat fans arr TURRIBLE!"
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