Super Bowl 2012 Live Stream: NBC's Internet Stream Is Future of Sports Coverage

I have a buddy who likes to talk about how cell phones are the future of computing, that someday we'll carry around one device that will play music, make calls and will plug into a monitor and keyboard when we return home and act as our computer.

Imagine how devastating water damage will be if that happens.

My buddy may very well be right, but it hasn't happened yet. What has happened is that NBC is live-streaming the Super Bowl online, and that most certainly is the future of sports broadcasting.

The marriage between television and the Internet hasn't happened across the board yet, though it is coming. I'm imagining the day when you don't flip to a channel; you instead go to a network's website and pick the show you want to watch.

There, networks could offer back episodes of all their shows so they wouldn't lose viewers to DVR's and DVD junkies and could embed advertising within those episodes. Think Hulu but with standard commercial breaks. They could live-stream shows at specific times similar to how shows have a time slot on television now.

And they could make watching sports so much cooler.

One of the cool features about watching NBC Sunday night broadcasts online is that you can watch from different camera angles you choose. But there are so many additional things that could coincide with watching a game online.

Perhaps you could add your Twitter feed so you could read tweets as they related to the game or a specific hashmarked topic. Perhaps you could track your fantasy football team right from the browser. Or, you could search stats as the game progressed on your television.

People generally watch sports live because there is a certain satisfaction that comes with watching along with "everyone else." There is a community feeling to watching a live sporting event.

As the Internet and television continue to meld, that sense of community could be increased by upping the interaction people have with others watching the game or their ability to control how they watch the game by allowing them to choose the camera angles they want to see.

Professional sports has always relied on staying current with the available technology and utilizing it to produce a great product. Someday, I believe that will mean watching the game from a website rather than a channel.

And it's only going to make the experience better.

Hit me up on Twitter—my tweets are Super (Bowl), thanks for asking.