I find the popularity of RedZone to be bizarre; you're not watching football any more, you're watching a live version of sportscenter. If you don't find the games entertaining enough to watch, why do you want to follow the sport at all?
When my team (Cowboys) plays, I'll generally watch the full game. I also watch some SNF/MNF/TNF games. But yes, it's fair to say I don't find every part of every game interesting (like commercials, cheesy halftime commentary, endless review of plays that will obviously be upheld/overturned in replay, 2 and 17 draw plays, etc) However, filtering out noise doesn't make me less of a sports fan, any more than reading headlines on HN makes me less of an industry enthusiast.
If there's 8 games going on at once, and more than one of them turn out to be good, RedZone is awesome because you essentially get to watch all the good games at once while keeping tabs on everything else.
It's definitely a different experience that immersing yourself in one game and loses some of that richness, but to say RedZone is just like Sportscenter indicates you're not really familiar with either.
I am, my brother-in-law loves RedZone and I've watched it with him several times. To me, it is as I described. I don't know how you can say that you "essentially get to watch all the good games" if you only get to see the scoring opportunities. You can't really get a feel for the game in 30 second clips here and there. Things that happened before the 20 yard line matter too.
Maybe its what Sportcenter used to be. Today its filled with weird entertainment, clips from press conferences, ongoing stories, etc. I'd bet maybe 7 minutes of each 30 minute episode is actual daily sports highlights and scores (not to mention the commercials that aren't present on RedZone) I think that's why the comparison between RedZone and Sportcenter was considered less than apt.
Red Zone is mostly for fantasy football players. It's far too shallow for actual fans.
The deep, tense, complicated, sophisticated overtime tie game the Cardinals and Seahawks played last Sunday was among the very best games of the past year but would have had near zero profile on Red Zone.
