With a new season oftentimes come new graphics packages and scorebugs. NBC debuted a new on-screen presentation for the Notre Dame-Navy telecast and Fox Sports did the same for FS1’s broadcast of Ohio-San Diego State.
Fox has never been bashful when it comes to their philosophy of sports broadcasting and you can certainly apply that to the new scorebug. If there’s one word to describe it, the on-screen graphics are certainly.. loud. The scorebug has grown in size and now includes giant team logos on either side of it. All of this means that the real estate it occupies on screen is more distracting than informative for viewers.
It did not go unnoticed on Saturday night.
Fox 2013 vs Fox 2023. This is not moving forward pic.twitter.com/4R5sQvEAs9
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 26, 2023
Somebody needs to do one of those threads where they make the Fox scorebug just a teensy bit bigger after every RT
— Matt Brown (@MattBrownEP) August 27, 2023
FOX, what the heck is this NCAA 09 Wii Edition looking scorebug? https://t.co/GSU5iQi5Xi
— Mason Voth (@TheRealMasonV) August 27, 2023
Man, this Fox CFB scorebug… it ain’t it
— Your Average, Everyday Sicko (@BullFan07) August 27, 2023
The new FOX/FS1 College Football Touchdown graphic is terrible. Just throw the whole score bug away.
— CaDarius Washington (@_1trucw) August 27, 2023
Somebody call Oppenheimer’s closest living relative and have them invent the world’s strongest bomb and drop it it on the new Fox Sports 1 score bug. It needs to be destroyed.
— scottwildcat (@scottwildcat) August 26, 2023
Why Fox feels the need to take up a quarter of the screen with a giant, obtrusive scorebug is a mystery. If it was any larger, you wouldn’t even be able to see some of the action take place at the bottom of the screen. It wouldn’t be so bad with the logos and modernistic font styles if it was just… smaller? Perhaps it could be pulled back in the weeks ahead a little bit. But it’s a curious trend to see both NBC and Fox go with larger and more prominent scorebugs this week for their college football coverage. Hopefully their NFL game broadcasts don’t follow suit and keep things a bit more minimalistic so the focus can remain on the action.
