I am inside the cockpit with the race car driver. My money is riding with him.
I have some action on Formula One. I have some action on a golf tournament. Fred Couples is my man.
I’ve got 100 dollars on a horse named Willis to win. He looks poised for a 10-length victory. The horses enter the starting gate.
I am in symbiosis with the lovely equine creature. The man-machine interface of the screen and the informational display. The human-animal interface of the jockey and the thoroughbred.
I sit at my workplace from 9 to 5:30, with a 45-minute lunch break. I work. I play.
If one watches a college football game on a cable TV channel like ESPN2, one sees how the game itself has been subordinated to the cult of information, the aesthetics of the Internet, and the speed-mania of the gambler. The much-heralded convergence of television and computers is propelled from both sides, and TV channels already resemble the World Wide Web. As on the Internet (or the archetypal multimedia screen), the football game is now just a video “window” which only takes up a portion of the screen. At the bottom of the screen is a nearly permanent band of information (like a Windows application “status bar”) which reports en permanence for three hours on the up-to-the-second scores of all other ongoing college games. The rest of the screen is occupied by various statistical windows (with transparent backgrounds) giving information pertinent to the game in the video window. The game itself has been “re-sized” or “minimized”; the viewer is less interested in the drama of this particular game than he is in instantaneous informational updates regarding the other games on which he has multiple or parley bets. He is enthralled by the split-second mutability of his wagered prospects. On Fox’s NFL football coverage, technical “special effects” turn the game screen virtual and oblique in relation to the physical screen, as scenes of players are flipped sideways, spun diagonally into the background, and whisked off into oblivion.
At 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, I’ll be ready for the kickoff of the Navy versus Notre Dame game from Dublin, Ireland. That game, unfortunately, won’t be shown on TV until a CBS tape-delayed broadcast at noon, but I’ll be listening to the play-by-play on the Irish (the nickname, not the country) Radio Network (119 stations nationwide) at the crack of dawn. At 12:30 p.m. the Big Ten game-of-the-week, featuring Michigan vs. Michigan State, will start on ESPN2 (the deuce). At 1 p.m., I’ll be simultaneously watching five games on which I have bets. Northern Illinois vs. Florida on SportsChannel Florida, Baylor vs. Miami of Florida on the Sunshine Network, Army vs. Miami of Ohio on ESPN, Boston College vs. Temple on the New England Sports Network, and Maryland vs. North Carolina State on ABC national coverage. By 3 p.m., the taped Notre Dame game should be over, and CBS will switch to its Big East conference coverage of Rutgers at Syracuse. At 4 p.m., ABC’s regional coverage will begin, and my subscription to their out-of-market college football series will allow me to watch Oklahoma at Kansas State, Southern Methodist at Texas Christian, North Texas at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and Oregon at Washington all at once on four different Cablevision channels. At 6:30 p.m., ESPN2 will show the day’s last afternoon matchup from the Southwest, as the University of California at Los Angeles takes on Arizona State. Evening games will begin at 7 p.m. on ESPN with Ohio State at Minnesota, and at 8 p.m. on CBS with New Mexico at San Diego State. At 11 p.m., ABC will show the West Coast nighttime special between Arizona and Oregon State, and the Honolulu special at 2:05 a.m., as the University of California at Fresno State meets the University of Hawaii. After a few hours’ sleep, I’ll be ready for Sunday and professional football. The action will continue unabated, thanks to my mini-dish satellite and my DIRECTV NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. At 1 p.m., I’ll be watching eight NFL games simultaneously on channels 338 through 345 of my 500-channel system. At 4 p.m., there will be five additional simultaneous NFL games on channels 346 through 350. At 8 p.m., the weekend’s football gambling will conclude with the NBC NFL Sunday night special contest between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. Rex Ryan Rules.
