Favre Cam: Good for the Game?

So, this post may be coming a few days too late, but did any of you happen to catch the Packers/Vikings game this past Sunday? Well if you did, you might have noticed that Fox featured a Brett Favre Cam – a camera dedicated solely to Brett for the entirety of the game that could be seen on the Fox Sports website.

This is brutal.

This is outrageous.

This unnecessary.

This is genius.

This tears me up inside.

Though Brett Favre is one of the greatest football players of all time, it doesn’t mean that he is bigger than the game. He isn’t more important than the pivotal division matchup between the Vikings and Packers and he certainly doesn’t deserve my undivided attention – not after the shenanigans he displayed over the summer.

I’m being a little hard on Brett here, and I know that this isn’t his fault. Fox is really to blame, but I am not surprised they did this. Fox has above and beyond the poorest production for sporting events. Too many graphics, too many animations, too many bad/senile announcers, too much noise – needless to say, I wasn’t surprised that they would pull a stunt like this.

However, looking past all this hoopla, I reluctantly tip my cap to Fox Sports. Afterall, isn’t this a solid example of interactive television? I believe it is. They encouraged their viewers to visit the website for supplemental viewing, and perhaps expanded their fan base for this particular game in the process (there are Viking fans, there are Packer fans, and then, there are Favre fans). Also, this would give them another chance to drive more advertising to consumers. I hate to say it, but this was genius.

I didn’t personally watch the Favre Cam, mainly because of my ‘bigger than the game’ argument above, but I bet there were some interesting things seen: genuine emotion, candid looks, and a fair amount of crotch adjustments.

As you can tell, I don’t really have a firm stance on the Favre Cam. I hate it, I love it, I hate it. I’ll let you digest all of this, and you can be the judge.