Most fans like simplicity. We don’t need flashy graphics. We don’t need crazy new camera angles. We like the familiar and the mundane. That doesn’t stop the NFL’s television partners from trying to grab our attention at every moment of a game with some form of ingenuity or creativity. It could be the weird graphics on NBC Sunday Night Football, or Fox dressing up their football robot Cleetus on holidays, but there are always slight tweaks. ESPN tried one of those slight tweaks on Monday Night and it fell flat. In fact, it was despised by almost everyone watching the game — and that was relayed to the world wide leader on social media.
The color yellow on a scorebug means something very particular to NFL fans. It means that there was a flag on the play. We have been trained to expect a penalty when we see anything even resembling yellow. ESPN went with this for their down and distance:
Maybe that’s a bit neon green to some people, but it’s definitely yellow enough to be mistaken for a signal that there was a penalty on the play. This isn’t rocket science. This had to go through some type of testing. No one sat there and thought about what the color yellow would do to fans. Well, the good thing is that this is in the age of digital media and ESPN was able to make a quick fix.
It doesn’t seem like giant media conglomerates are listening very often, but this was one case where they had their ear to ground — or eyes on Twitter. This was a simple mistake that could have been avoided if anyone who has watched football for the past 20 years got a sneak pick of the graphic plan. That either didn’t happen or the graphic slipped by quality assurance testers.
In any case, the fix was in and it was in quickly. We have to thank ESPN for that.
