Tag: sports

NFL Week 9

I don’t know about you, but I can certainly use a break from contemplating the ghastly moral morass of the Clinton inner circle.

On the one hand, going into a Week 9 divisional game with the Lions at the top of the NFC North would have looked pretty good before the season. But after two butt-whippings, one by a bad Chicago team, the resignation of the offensive coordinator, and the exposure of the offensive line as one that couldn’t stop a pass rush by the Little Sisters of the Poor’s junior varsity, things don’t look good for the Vikes.

It’s time for Coach Zim to step up and pull a rabbit or two out of his horned helm.

No wonder it’s in decline

The NFL won’t give a gold blazer or a ring to Ken Stabler’s family:

Election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame creates virtual immortality. But actual immortality may be required to achieve the full benefits of the recognition.

As noticed on the Twitter feed of Mike Freeman, whose biography of Ken Stabler will be released this month, the powers-that-be at the Pro Football Hall of Fame have declined to give a gold jacket or a so-called Ring of Excellence to Stabler. Presumably because he’s not alive to wear them….

Why shouldn’t the family of the Hall of Fame be able to own and display the gold jacket and the ring? The Hall of Fame doesn’t confiscate those items when living Hall of Fames die; the Hall of Famers shouldn’t deny a jacket and ring to those who didn’t win enshrinement during their lifetimes.

What a weird, nasty, small-minded organization. No wonder they consistently make stupid and self-defeating decisions these days. Not that I care about Stabler, much less his family. But I’ll bet Raiders fans do. This isn’t a big deal, except in that it demonstrates the utter tone deafness and lack of common sense that characterizes the Roger Goodell NFL.

NFL Week 8

This is the weekly open NFL thread. Meanwhile, NFL ratings continue to decline, but everyone even remotely associated with the NFL claims it has nothing – NOTHING – to do with the political antics of the players.

After seven weeks, the NFL has a problem. Whether the league wants it acknowledge it publicly or privately or will try to minimize it with damage-control doublespeak (“we don’t have fewer viewers, the same viewers are viewing less“), the NFL has a problem.


Ratings are down, every week in nearly every broadcasting window.


Speaking only for myself, I think my declining interest in the game is primarily due to instant replay. Between all the ticky-tack penalties and how long it takes to review every score and every turnover, I find that these days, I just don’t have much interest in watching if the Vikings aren’t playing.

If I ran the league, I’d keep instant replay and allow it to be used on one challenge per game by each coach. Any call or non-call by the officials would be reviewable. That way, only the most absolutely vital plays would ever be reviewed.

There are also too many games being televised. 12 PM, 3 PM, and Monday Night Football, plus two games on Thanksgiving, are sufficient. And a 14-game season would be to the benefit of the players’ bodies, and likely, to the quality of the play as well. The NFL needs to understand that sometimes, less is more.

NFL Week 5

And the Vikings shoot to make it five straight against Houston. This is the weekly NFL open thread.

Okay, now this is going to sound crazy, but rest assured, it has NOTHING to do with my being a Vikings fan. A friend who shall go unnamed subscribes to the scripted theory of the NFL, by which he means that the probable outcome of the season is more or less determined in advance.

It doesn’t always hold up, of course, due to the unpredictable elements of the game, but he points out that there are observable primary, secondary, and tertiary narratives. And here’s where it gets interesting: for the first time, I’m picking up a narrative that suggests the Vikings are scripted to win the Super Bowl this year.

One example, and far from the most egregious:

The play of their defense has been the biggest on-field factor in their success, which should sound like a familiar formula to those with memories long enough to remember how the Broncos fueled their run to the Super Bowl last season. One member of that Broncos team is now in Minnesota and running back Ronnie Hillman has found more links the two clubs than a standout defense.


“The big thing is the camaraderie,” Hillman said, via the Pioneer Press. “This team plays for each other, and that’s the biggest part. This team has the same brotherhood — these guys treat each other like family the exact same [as in Denver], and that’s what you need to have a championship team. I saw it here right away, how these guys treat each other with respect and without excuses — they’re accountable for what they do, and that’s definitely a good trait to have as a whole. The guys are cool.”


There’s a lot of time between Week Five and the Super Bowl for those comparisons to grow stronger or prove to be superficial, but the Vikings have already shown an ability to overcome adverse developments that they’ll need to go the distance.


I picked up on this after watching their Week Two win and hearing the announcers go on and on about a very different game than the one I’d just watched.

Peak NFL

Was apparently the 2015 season:

The NFL has been sacked for a loss. Once considered immune to the audience erosion plaguing the television industry, ratings for the National Football League have tumbled through the first four weeks of the season.

TV networks have bet heavily on sports in general, and the NFL in particular, because of the must-see value of their content. While more viewers are watching commercial-free streaming services like Netflix or recording shows on DVRs and skipping the ads, sports is still primarily watched live, making it valuable to advertisers.

Combined, ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS are spending an average of $5 billion a year for football rights through 2021. The games not only score big ratings and ad sales, but are crucial platforms to promote other programming.

So far this season, viewership on those networks is down about 10% from last season, according to Nielsen, with steeper declines for prime-time games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday. The drop has caught advertisers and rights holders off guard and left them scrambling to find a cause.

All of the discussions about “a cause” for the NFL’s declining rating are somewhat missing the point. There is no single factor. It is undeniable that the quality of the product has declined, or that the relentless focus on making the passing game easier has imbalanced the level of competition between the QB-haves and the QB-have nots. It’s undeniable that the incessant politics, most of which is at least irritating to the core audience, has caused some people to stop watching. And it’s obvious that Hispanics are considerably less interested in the sport than the whites they have been demographically replacing while fantasy football has changed the way many fans watch the game. The fact that 8 years of economic depression means people have less average disposable income certainly hasn’t helped.

But the chief culprit, in my opinion, is overexposure. A Monday night game used to be a big deal. Adding Sunday night football and Thursday night football means there is insufficient recovery time to begin anticipating the next game. And the move from a 14-game season to a 17-game season means that there is too much football for too long a time, with too many injuries.

Here is my prescription for restoring football to its former glory.

  • Reduce the 17-week, 16-game season to 15 weeks, with 14 games.
  • Ban all politics by players and the league. No more flags on helmets, pink cleats, or protests. If the league can discipline a player for wearing the wrong color wristband, it can do so for failing to stand at attention, Bud Grant-style, for the anthem. Black helmet stickers for one game to honor a deceased player, coach, or owner are acceptable.
  • Cut down on the number of flags, particularly those that nullify a big play without having directly affected it. And get rid of instant replay. It’s only made matters worse, to the extent that no one even knows what a catch is anymore.
  • Stop emphasizing the pass. 500-yard passing games are flag football and BYU, not the NFL. Pass interference is 10 yards, automatic first down.
  • Encourage more white players by adopting standard, race-neutral 2-game bans for an arrest, 4 more games for a conviction. Teams will tend to prefer the more law-abiding marginal white players over the more athletic marginal black players because the former will be able to stay on the field.
  • No more wild card teams. Win the division, make the playoffs. Two rounds and the Super Bowl will end playoff fatigue.