ESPN's Hollywood-Style Sam Ponder Camera Angle Was Weird

For Samantha Ponder's halftime interview last night with USC head coach Steve Sarkisian, ESPN used an approach rarely seen in television: a long lens, with shallow depth of field. It looked less like live sports programming—and more like Hollywood.

That Sarkisian wasn't even visible for most of the interview made it all that much weirder. (ESPN eventually cut to a SkyCam-based angle for the end of it, which wasn't any more normal.) We understand that ESPN uses bowl season for experimentation, but this is just uncomfortable.

[ESPN]