…Well, It Never Stopped Being Great, But There’s A Few Things That Would Make It Better

It’s week three in the NFL so we should probably talk about the things that are bugging us after two weeks. It’ll be therapeutic. I’m here to help.

Crime & Punishment … It’s third and 13, the QB drops back to pass and he’s sacked, but hold on, penalty flag. It’s “defensive holding” but no one was really held, rather, a cornerback bumped into a receiver and the penalty will cost the defense five yards AND a first down! So that makes the call more like a 20 yard penalty and it changes the flow of the game in an inappropriate and profound way, it’s essentially jail time for jaywalking. It gets worse. It’s second and 10 at the offense’s own 45 yard line, the QB takes the shotgun snap scrambles to his left and heaves an arching throw far down field where the DB clearly runs into the receiver before the ball arrives. The receiver never had any real chance for a reception, but it’s clearly pass interference. The offense gets a first down AND the ball at the opponent’s four yard line! That makes it a 50+ yard penalty, and again, it changes the game in a way that is totally ridiculous. Together, these two scenarios happen maybe five to ten times in every NFL game every Sunday. What is the NFL trying to accomplish? Well, by making DBs public enemy number one, they are clearly trying to create more offense. There has to be a better way. This isn’t a debate about the validity of holding or pass interference penalties. They’re judgement calls, some are fair, some aren’t and that’s the way the ball bounces, but five and fifteen yards is where these penalties should begin and end. Handing out free first downs and what feels like acres of football real estate for these types of penalties is a joke, it’s like giving a player 10 foul shots if you bump his elbow while he’s shooting. The purpose of penalties and fouls and yellow cards is to regulate player conduct in the name of creating fair competition, not to change the natural arc of the games themselves. If the NFL wants to encourage more offense, wants more wide open play make the field bigger, go study the Canadian Football League. It really sucks to be a defensive back in 2017, on any given Sunday he’s routinely given a life sentence for what amounts to, well, getting caught with a joint. NFL punishment doesn’t fit the crime and it hurts the game.

Rams & Chargers … What did we do to deserve this? There’s two teams in LA and nobody wins, we’re all losers. No one is attending these games and no one ever will. The only upside, for anyone, is that Southern California will get a new stadium venue and that will mean more and better concerts and national sporting events and a social scene that may be worth checking out if you suddenly find yourself flush with cash. But that’s far into the future and so in 2017 LA is in a sorry, sorry NFL state. The people that got screwed the worst are the 99.9% of NFL fans in Southern California that have and always will root for real NFL teams outside of Los Angeles, who now have to deal with sports sections wasted on the Rams and Chargers, who never asked for or needed the NFL back in LA and worse, much, much worse, who are subjected to Rams and Chargers games (and almost never any other NFL game) on our televisions. NFL TV ratings are leaking oil due to numerous factors and social trends, but when 2017 is over and the NFL has to look back at the cumulative ratings for NFL games on network TV in LA, when they look back at the train wreck of the Rams and Chargers on TV, they will in fact realize, with painful suddenness, that the old, tired theory that the NFL would be better with a team in LA is simply an out-of-touch notion held by cranky old men. And when that happens, let me be the first to suggest that the Rams become the League’s first team in London and, given that San Diego has always just been a suburb of Mexico anyway, that Bolts relocate to Mexico City.

Collinsworth & The Announcer Rut … We now seem to get Chris Collinsworth twice a week. Chris Collinsworth, the football analyst for two of the three weekly national broadcasts of the most popular and important (we all think football is really important) sporting events ever conceived. Why? Is he the best we got, the best we can get? Certainly not. You know how people say that certain people have the IT factor? Well, we can all agree that Chris Collinsworth doesn’t have IT. Whatever IT is, it’s nowhere near Collinsworth. He’s not funny, not endearing, not especially insightful, not good looking, not good for ratings, he’s probably not good at parties. My twenty-something sons ask me, Who is he? I say, He used to play football, he wasn’t especially good or popular. But that a few of us older guys recollect who he is doesn’t explain why he’s on my TV two nights a week. Nothing makes the NFL look older, more out of touch, more oblivious to trends and the world around them, more tuned out to their changing customer base than having old f’ers like Collinsworth in every booth on every network for every NFL game. And then when Collinsworth is done, after the game or at halftime, they switch, all the networks do this, to some fake set or pop-up tent on the field where seven to ten guys are waiting to talk. Everyone but the main announcer will be former players and they stand or sit in line so that they can speak for 15 seconds about whatever dead horse is being beaten. The whole concept is tired and it doesn’t create clarity just chaos, it doesn’t provide insights just banter and it doesn’t enhance the experience for the audience it just keeps the audience from what it really wants, more football. Does every retired player really have to be hired for a network studio job? Do we need 12 former players on every network set? Shit, Vin Scully used to announce an entire World Series by himself. Fewer voices certainly could be the answer, but we have enough evidence to now conclude that old players and players traveling in packs certainly is NOT the answer, the answer to better NFL TV. The broadcasting and announcing dynamic we see every Sunday needs to be simplified, it needs less talk and fewer dudes on set and younger announcers and announcers that aren’t football players and more highlights…In short, the networks need to try something different, take a timeout and take Chris Collinsworth with you.

Numbers & Colors … The NFL has had worst ideas, but I can’t remember when. Small colleges, colleges without any real sports tradition, routinely change their football uniforms or create a new logo or switch up their school colors for the homecoming game or adopt a new dinosaur mascot even though their team name is the Saints. They’ve got nothing to lose in this game of uniform roulette because no one cares about their teams and maybe they’ll stumble onto something trendy and sell seven more jerseys on their website. But bigger college and university programs, colleges that have fans that tailgate with a Le Cordon Bleu chef and alumni that write checks with seven zeroes on them change uniforms and colors at their own peril, and over the last five years we’ve seen some hideous bastardizations of uniforms and traditions (ya, we’re looking at you Maryland). The NFL should know better. Last night we watched a game between a yellow uniformed team and a black uniformed team, the problem was that the actual colors of these teams, the colors their fans wear, the colors used in official merchandise and in stadiums and game programs, is blue & white and red & gold. Ummm, this just in, NFL fans identify teams by their colors, so if you turn on NBC and you don’t instantly recognize the teams playing by the color of their uniforms, well, that’s a big problem. Color Rush my ass! Every week it’s an Ugliest Uniform Contest, and it’s sad, oh so sad, that a sports league that’s the king of the hill thinks it needs to resort to gimmicks. Someone at the NFL probably thought different jerseys and colors would be fun. Well, they don’t call you the No Fun League for nothing…Just stick to no fun.