Are any spectator sports better live than on TV? I’ve got some thoughts

#TeamAFP veteran Scott German sat at the top of Richmond International Raceway for last night’s Cook Out 400, taking in his first NASCAR Cup Series race in person in more than a decade.

Scott’s verdict: “exciting in person, definitely easier to follow on TV.”

“It’s not really an event you can share with whoever you go with,” he said, citing the obvious: noise.

“You can’t communicate with each other. After a while, I found I was more focused on the patrons than the race.”

This comment came with a photo attached, of a guy a couple of rows ahead of him, heavily tatted, with a watermelon.

Notice the checkered flag planted in the watermelon.

“Interesting crowd, for sure,” was Scott’s final observation on this.

He got me thinking, because I tend to agree with him, that NASCAR is better consumed as a fan watching on TV than it is in person.

I mean, on the one hand, there’s nothing like the sound and feel of three dozen cars on a restart; you don’t get that from TV.

But in person, unless you’re also glued to your phone, and link up to audio, in the form of the radio broadcast, or you tune in to the teams on the radio, it’s just a bunch of cars driving around in circles for four hours, and if you look away for even a second, you can get lost as to what is going on, easily.

Whereas at home, you get everything – which driver might be running low on gas, which crew chief is thinking through two tires vs. four on the net pit stop, who’s tight and loose, the other myriad mechanical and strategy issues that need to be addressed as the laps roll on.

So, I’m there with Scott on NASCAR.

But then, as we discussed this, I mean, baseball is kinda the same, isn’t it?

In person, you get the sights and smells – the crack of the bat; and TV can’t do justice to Boog’s BBQ.

But unless you’re sitting directly behind home plate, you have no sense of the strike zone, and even if you are behind home plate, what about the call on the close play at first, or the stolen base at second?

Was that line drive down the line fair or foul?

Baseball, like NASCAR, is better at home.

I’d argue football and basketball are better in person, though it’s close.

My vantage point is that of sportswriter, and I like being able to see plays develop, to try to understand what each team is trying to do, and the TV cameras in both sports tend to follow the ball so closely that you can’t see what’s going on away from the ball.

There are times when there’s something controversial going on that people in the stadium or in the arena miss out – the folks in charge of the on-site operations need to consider that, and get game officials to better explain what’s going on for the live crowd.

In general, though, I prefer football and basketball in person, with the added advantage of, most of the people employed as football and basketball broadcasters, and 100 percent of the folks who are supposed to be the experts as color commentators, are insufferably bad at their jobs.

So, NASCAR and baseball, better on TV; football and basketball, better in person.

Pro wrestling is the other sport that I watch with regularity.

I’m going to go 51/49 here that wrestling is better on TV, just because, when the announcers do their jobs even decently well, they’re setting you up for the story that’s being told.

I go 51/49 on wrestling because, when it’s good, live wrestling is something that you can feel – the bumps on the mat, the old lady in the second row giving the heel the what for, the oohs and aahs for the aerial maneuvers, the emotion of the hot tag.

These are the sports that I do.

I’d love to hear from people who are regulars with hockey, soccer, others receiving votes.

The problem that live sports has across the board is, most of us have big-screen TVs that broadcast in HD, and we can watch hundreds of games on any given day on these devices without having to pay out the nose for tickets, parking and food, and we can go to the bathroom any time we want, and we can do all of this without having to compete for space with people in various degrees of sobriety and good nature.

OK, my wife has to deal with me when we’re at home watching a UVA-Duke game in Cameron, and I’m cursing uncontrollably a half-hour before tipoff, and it gets worse before it gets better.

That may be why she wanted to make the drive down to Durham the last time those two teams met on the hardwood, last year.

She knows I won’t make an absolute ass out of myself in public.

I digress.

I would like to hear what people think on this – TV vs. in person, name the sport.