CBS Drops New Scorebug for Super Bowl

One does not simply waste an opportunity to debut a brand-new scorebug during a Super Bowl so CBS has dropped the design below for this Kansas City Chiefs-San Francisco 49ers game. It’s bigger, it’s bolder, the font can be seen from space and … an informal straw poll here at The Big Lead suggests that it’s worse.

Other blogs are hard at work trying to categorize the public’s reception to such a stark change but if we’re being completely honest, some of those posts don’t seem entirely scientific.

So many people are legitimately passionate about graphic design and there’s no need to be rude but the team abbreviations are way too big. That’s like the least important part of the whole scorebug. It’s the NFL, we know who’s playing. It’s literally everything else — score, time, down and distance — that is crucial information. Then again, the next time CBS changes it I’ll probably do a post on how the old scorebug was better. That’s how these networks get you. Introduce something, take a few hits about it, then laugh all the way to the bank.

Side note for the history books. Right now it’s 3-0 early in the second quarter and no one has the courage to say this game stinks. But it does. Like bottom-of-the-Big-Ten-West bad. Plenty of time left and it’s bound to be a freezing cold take but a third of the way in and it’s trending toward an all-time dud.