TV take: Nonstop Apple Cup drama kept viewers hooked, despite inconvenience of streaming on Peacock
Let’s be blunt. We’re fine with streaming. Have embraced it, actually. For entertainment. How else would we get our “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” and movie star fix? But for sports?
You can keep it. Trash it. Toss it, along with your big screen, out the window. Until the industry fixes a few things, all of which were evident while watching Washington State hold off a self-destructive Washington 24-19 in the new version of the Apple Cup.
None of that was the fault of Peacock’s on-air broadcast crew, Paul Burmeister on the play-by-play and former Texas quarterback Colt McCoy as the analyst, with Zora Stephenson reporting from the Lumen Field turf.
The issues we have with streaming are with the technical aspect of the presentation itself. It sucks the life out of a college football Saturday. Even as the Cougars and Huskies gave us Saturday showdown filled with drama.
What they saw
Burmeister’s resume is packed. Olympics. NFL Network. Notre Dame football on the radio. Now he can write in the 116th Apple Cup – in sharpie.
He and McCoy were near-perfect in the deciding minutes.
The Huskies, who trailed the entire second half, had a shot at the end. Down five but with the ball, first-and-goal at WSU’s 9. About 100 seconds left.
Three plays, one for a loss of 1 yard, and it was fourth down at the 1.
Timeout UW. First-year Husky coach Jedd Fisch decides to run Mississippi State transfer Will Rogers on an option right. The short side. His flip to Jonah Coleman was late, Kyle Thornton collected his fifth tackle at the 2-yard-line, and the Cougars had the ball.
McCoy, as he should have, questioned everything, from the play call to the direction to the blocking.
There was no question about Washington State’s final couple of snaps, though. After short runs made the Huskies burn their last timeouts, John Mateer induced not just one offsides penalty but two, the final one allowing the Cougars to run out the clock. But the game didn’t end right away as Washington (2-1) lost poise and committed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after the final snap.
It was the Huskies’ 16th penalty. They cost the home team – as designated despite the neutral site – 135 yards. Quite possibly a game-deciding 135 yards.
And it wasn’t even a Pac-12 officiating crew.
• Burmeister was sharp much of the game. He did make some minor mistakes but had no problem correcting himself. For someone who hasn’t done the play-by-play between two Pac-12 teams before – wait, he still hasn’t – he had fewer issues than some West Coast veterans.
His partner, McCoy, wasn’t at the same level, although he did reach one goal. He seemed intent on not making enemies. After all, when he came in to Seattle as Arizona Cardinals quarterback a few years ago, he made plenty. Why make more? Whenever he pointed out an issue for either team – for example, UW’s six first-half penalties – he tempered it with an explanation.
Ever heard of Texas nice? McCoy exemplified it Saturday.
• Speaking of nice, that’s how McCoy was when speaking about Mateer. It was justified.
“He’s been great,” said McCoy as the Cougars began the rainy fourth quarter. After reciting the quarterback’s stats, he finished with, “He’s been impressive.”
Mateer’s final numbers were a pedestrian 17-of-34 passing for 245 yards, the game’s final touchdown and one interception. There were two called on the field, but replay overturned the second with less than 4 minutes left, one that Peacock’s officiating expert, Reggie Smith, was certain it would not.
That reprieve, and Mateer’s 62 rushing yards – including two scores – allowed for the end-of-game, hard-snap heroics.
• At one point in the first half, McCoy mentioned he could hear the pads pop. He used it to illustrate the game’s intensity. Which it did. But it also illustrated one other aspect of the new-look, nonconference Apple Cup.
The noise level at Lumen Field was nothing like the previous rivalry games at Husky Stadium or Gesa Field. And not close to the same decibel neighborhood of a Seahawks game.
What we saw
Not enough in the dead periods, and that’s a problem. A first-world one, sure. But that’s where most of us live. In a world where we expect the ability to …
•Replay any play we want and return to where we started simply;
•Switch easily between games, and back again.
One of the greatest sports-viewing advancements in the past few decades is the DVR, an in-home replay machine. With its addition, sports viewers were no longer at the mercy of some nondescript producer in the truck to see what just happened. Over and over. We were all producers.
In our home, with Comcast’s cable product, that’s possible within those channels cable pays to show. But Peacock – a Comcast subsidiary – is a streaming service, even if you can access it through your cable box (for a small fee, of course).
It’s possible to scroll back and watch a certain play. It’s just not as easy, read, controllable, as you might be used to if you’ve had cable in the past.
Even with Comcast, the Peacock interface includes an unacceptable lag between leaving the broadcast to watch another game. Returning is even tougher, longer and more frustrating. At one point, it took me 35 seconds to leave the Civil War and return to the Apple Cup.
Bad enough it made in darn near impossible. Wanting to watch how the other Pac-12 team, Oregon State, was doing in its rivalry with Oregon? You could switch to Fox 28 and hope you could get back to the Apple Cup action before you missed too many plays. Or you could just stay put, like it was 1964 or something.
Sure, a second TV, hooked to the cable box or the antenna you bought when Comcast and Fox had a carriage dispute, would solve the problem, too.
If, you know, you wanted to spend more money on top of the cost of the streaming service.