Top 10 HD Sports Broadcasts of 2008
Sports is always better in high-definition, and 2008 produced some events and images that truly stood out.
Has any genre of television broadcasting benefited more from the advent of high-definition than sports?
The first events I watched on my HD plasma after picking it up last year were the Thanksgiving NFL games, and they certainly gave me one of those “holy cow, this looks amazing” moments. This past year, there have been moment after moment like that thanks to the combination of HD and sports, with some competitions truly standing apart from others.
Watching season after sports season, championship after championship definitely made me wish I had bought into HD earlier, so I tried to keep track of my favorite events of the year—and taking into consideration the look and sound of the particular events almost as much as the games themselves.
So I present to you my top 10 favorites from 2008, and it wasn’t easy. This year was especially entertaining with more nail-biting, all-the-marbles games than usual—even the Super Bowl and NCAA Men’s Basketball final were close for a change, and only one of those games cracked my top 10.
Am I partial to certain sports? Sure, and I’ll admit there is some bias on my list—sorry, NASCAR fans, I appreciate how great your sport is in HD, but I just couldn’t flag a race for the top 10. I’ll view the lush fairways and lakes of your average golf tournament before I turn on auto racing.
To me, one event clearly exhibited the jaw-dropping spectacle of high-def more than any. But I hope you have fun scrolling through the first nine as well. There’s an honorable mention bonus at the end, too.
10. Immelman Wins Masters
Tiger Woods didn’t even win the Masters this year, so why is it in my top 10? Unfortunately, my local NBC affiliate in Boston didn’t carry the final round of the U.S. Open in HD (technical glitch apparently), so I had to toss that out. But even though Trevor Immelman beat Woods and the rest of the field at the Masters in April, for this event especially the course at Augusta National is almost as big a star—no golf course looks better, and CBS’ superb telecast enhance every bit of green and each azalea.
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