The Case of Hard To Find Highlights

Sure, you missed your match over the weekend. The DVR was broken, the wife was yelling at you, you had chores to do, whatever. So, what is a guy supposed to do to watch the goal highlights from his favorite match?

It's one thing to read about the missed game, but entirely another to watch some of it. Rarely, you'll get lucky enough to watch a rerun during the week on FSC or GolTv or something. Maybe you will even drop the $5-$10 to watch a month's worth of games on your club's website, but we're talking one measly game, right?

So, you are like me and you jump over to Youtube trying to track the game down. For example, I just missed the Man U v Liverpool game. Berbatov netted a hat trick and Gerrard, not to be outdone, puts 2 in by himself.

Hmmm, search "Man U v Liverpool". About 100 pages pop up. Okay, narrow that down to those uploaded this week. Not sure how, but several people are somehow all seeing and that carries over to their ability to upload their clairvoyance onto Youtube two days before the game actually happens. Oh, wait, you click on it and a "copyrights prevent us from..." text comes up but, you can go to their site and download it for a price. How convenient. Let me check the next one, same thing. And the next, and the next... You get the picture.

What kills is that a simple search still turns up 40+ uploads yet for 35 of them, there are perhaps only two or three websites who are using various uploader names to get you to go to their site. One is understandable, two, okay, more than that is comparable to spamming.

Now, I'm all about free enterprise and yadda yadda, but seriously, this is the most frustrating thing for anyone out there who is simply trying to catch the highlights of what they missed. It has become so bad that what used to take 1-2 minutes to track down now has many looking for 20-30 minutes. And sometimes, you still don't find what you are looking for.

I think we are seeing the death of Youtube. It has become so big and unwieldly that posters can create faux names and spam the heck out you. All that and you still won't find what you are looking for.

In the meantime, I guess I and others in search of highlights will go elsewhere. That is, until they become so big that these leeches expand out and seek to annoy yet even more fans than ever before.

Photo: Hudsonhorizons