HD helped The mtn. immensely

It's amazing how far a little high definition will go when it comes to making a football telecast look professional.

The mtn. still isn't exactly ESPN, but it looks a lot less like a public-access channel simply by airing games in HD.

It's easier to forgive — or at least ignore — the weak announcing if the picture looks good. And the picture looked good if you were watching the BYU-Utah game in HD on Saturday.

Was everything perfect? No, of course not. But sit down sometime and really pay attention to a game on mighty ESPN. That network isn't perfect, either.

There are mistakes in the graphics from time to time. There's bad camera work and bad direction.

And some of ESPN's on-air "talent" is not good. Last week during ESPN2's telecast of the Rutgers-Louisville game, analyst Brock Huard went on and on about how the refs had made the right call on a helmet-to-helmet contact personal foul.

The replay clearly showed that there was no helmet-to-helmet contact, and yet — rather than admit he'd made a mistake — Huard argued that it was still the right call.

Am I saying that The mtn. is as good as ESPN? Absolutely not. The Mountain West's channel has a long, long way to go to be in that league.

However, as much as it might pain some of us to admit it, The mtn. has made significant strides in the past couple of years in its football coverage.

(Ouch. That sort of hurts to put in print.)

It's taken longer than it should have. Fans had — and continue to have — plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about the channel.

And, as always, distribution remains a problem.

(Note to the The mtn. and the MWC: The DirecTV deal was great, but it didn't make everything OK.)

Unfortunately, the high-def experience is not, at this point, a permanent feature on The mtn. We're not going to see it during upcoming basketball games; we're probably not going to see it when the football season begins in the fall.

At least the folks at The mtn. seem to recognize that it's a necessity and they're moving in that direction.

They need get there as quickly as possible.

And then we'll find something else to complain about. Because we're fans.

And critics.

I COULD WRITE a whole column — a whole series of columns — about the TV coverage of BYU quarterback Max Hall's post-game comments on Saturday.

But I won't. Too much has been said and written and telecast about it already.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting local TV should have ignored or downplayed the story. Because it clearly was a story.

But, just as clearly, it was overplayed. Almost to the exclusion of covering the game itself.

It's worth noting that, outside of Utah, the story barely registered a blip on the national networks.

e-mail: pierce@desnews.com