I think the primary benefit on the news reporter type of use case is to the reporter more than to you. It's an interface that facilitates talking to other people while still manipulating the visualizations better than traditional interfaces. I agree, from the audience perspective there's no real difference unless greater 'comfort' with the technology comes across as more focus by the reporter on the issues. Much like the on screen tablet that is used by football commentators, the technology facilitates their reaching out to you.

Not being a visualization person, I've been pretty skeptical of this technology myself. However, I've been in the room with similar touch technologies that facilitate multiple people working with the interface together. It works better than some might think if they haven't seen a group of non-tech people using it together on a real world scenario. My experience has been with people with various backgrounds standing around various views of regional data couple with analytical data debating policy implications of data. The technology promotes exploring in a collaborative manner that you can't get when one person is driving. I suspect the super bowl scenario will have a similar experience - it will act as a facilitating technology for people to centralize informed discussions around.

I think the poster needs to really assess what type of career he's looking for. As a comp sci major, if he hasn't delved deeply into programming (beyond class work) and isn't into the other computer science focus areas (hardware, graphical design, etc), I'd worry about whether this was truly the right field. Unless he has real financial needs (babies, dying parents that need support), he needs to recognize that setting a course that fits his interests is far more important than finding a job area that pays well.