Espn’s X Games Should Be Extremely Interesting

ESPN’s Winter X Games are a TV test lab anyway, so why not grab Bill Nye “The Science Guy” from Disney to explain why you can’t ice skate on cement.

“You laugh,” Nye said. “Of course, that’s the whole idea. To make you laugh.”

Seen by more than 1 million kids each week on his award-winning Disney Channel show, Nye will bring his zany blend of humor and science to ESPN’s four days of coverage of the Winter X Games beginning Thursday from Big Bear Lake, Calif.

“The deal is, it’s all about gravity,” Nye said. “Winter sports are all about gravity, with the exception of figure skating and ice hockey. And the other thing about winter sports is, it melts. It’s unique to water. You can’t ice skate on cement, no matter how smooth you polish it.”

Nye began his career in entertainment while working as an engineer at Boeing in Seattle, doing a comedy-science routine on local TV and finally moving to The Disney Channel’s Mickey Mouse Club.

“Sounds to me like we’ll produce some bits, and I’ll get some skiing in,” Nye said.

ESPN and ESPN2 will televise 16 hours of the games, which they sponsor and stage themselves. They include such extreme events as ice climbing, snow mountain biking, snowboarding, and super modified shovel racing. The shovels are anything but.

“They sort of look like toboggans. They haul bungees, as we say in motorcycles,” Nye said. “And then there are those kookie people who like to ride bikes on ski slops. They’re very funny. They’re out of control most of the time, and they land on their heads a lot.”

Out takes

If you think that’s the weird science angle on it, you should see the toys ESPN veep Jed Drake has at his disposal.

The most other-worldly gizmo originally was known as Reality X and now is called simply VRX. With it, ESPN and Silicon Graphics of California have programmed every square foot of Snow Summit into a huge computer. With the push of a button, ESPN can call up detailed computer images from any point on the snowboard course, for example, and show it from any of thousands of angles.

It’s a memory-intensive, labor-intensive task, but it’s applications for televised sports could be manifold, if it works well.

“Although ESPN constantly admonishes us not to talk about money, I will tell you that this is so expensive you would only want to use it on major events,” Drake said.

At least for the time being.

It’s the type of technology that would allow a director to start with a computer animated shot of the earth from orbit, and continue zooming in seamlessly until the camera was focused up your nose.

“The potential for more complex uses of this technology in the future is endless,” Drake said.

It could be used, for example, to computer map a golf course, then show detailed graphic images of each hole as it’s being played, right down to the slope of the greens.

“It’s true, this event and the X Games as well, are like laboratories for us,” Drake said. “Our No. 1 priority, of course, is to provide quality programming, but after that, we can experiment with technology we wouldn’t dare use on other events.”

For only casual fans of football, the highlight of Fox’s pregame coverage of the Super Bowl on Sunday must have been John Madden’s all-time Super Bowl team.

Near the end of the 1-hour special, Madden gathered all his players in a mock locker room around him, and, just as he noted, it was pretty impressive.