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Why Monday Night Football Is No Longer Relevant
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TMC
Jan 11, 2013, 4:59:07 AM1/11/13
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http://www.footballnation.com/content/why-monday-night-football-is-no-longer-relevant/20397/
By Omari Stridiron
December 27, 2012 10:22 am
Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National
Football League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from
ABC after 35 years, the all-sports superpower cable network has pulled
out all the stops to not only heavily promote every game but treat it
like an event no matter who is playing. They devote most of their
Sportscenters before the game, to the game.
They have an hour and a half of "NFL Monday Night Countdown" devoted
to not only talk about the game but to put player interview after
player interview on the players in the game. It's complete overkill,
but hey with billions of dollars being spent each year and since the
"worldwide leader in sports" doesn't have the Super Bowl or a single
NFL playoff game to it's endless list of sports properties, ESPN does
everything possible to make "Monday Night Football" a highly watchable
event.
We know that many NFL regular season games are like an event. Tens of
millions tune in to the big match ups where ever they are televised -
whether it's on ESPN, CBS, FOX, NBC, or even the new "Thursday Night
Football" on NFL Network.
With so many ways of watching the NFL football these days, does
"Monday Night Football" matter anymore? Or better yet does it still
exist? Yes, there is still NFL Football on Monday nights in the
regular season.
This is not the 70s, 80s, and 90s anymore when "Monday Night Football"
on ABC was not only the biggest prime-time sports series on television
but also where the NFL would put their biggest match ups on the Monday
night schedule. The days of Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, and "Dandy"
Don Meredith are long gone.
The great Al Michaels now calls games with his still great "miracles"
voice with Chris Collinsworth on NBC. But a huge culture change has
happened in the past few decades that have changed how we view the NFL
as an event.
Before ESPN took over the Monday night package there were only two
networks to view the NFL in prime-time: ABC on Monday nights and ESPN
on Sunday nights.
Now there are three: NBC for Sunday nights, ESPN for Monday nights,
and the NFL Network for 13 out of the 17 weeks of the regular season.
And even though the NBC Thanksgiving night showdown was a humongous
blowout with the stable Patriots destroying the lost Jets, the game
still attracted high viewership. The NFL Network used to have Thursday
games for for only two months, but the league expanded the length of
the schedule to get more cable subscribers like Time Warner to put the
channel on it's list of cable channels and it worked.
The ratings for the NFL Network's Thursday night games were big and
almost as big as an audience for Simon Cowell's "X Factor" on Fox.
Also, NBC has something ESPN does not: Flexible scheduling. That helps
NBC tremendously because they can get games late in the season, like
the Cowboys vs Redskins NFC East divisional showdown, from CBS and Fox
placing them in the now-coveted 8:20PM slot and helping NBC's "Sunday
Night Football" to become the most-watched prime-time show on
television: beating out American Idol.
Most of the games on Monday Nights have been dull and they have been
with little buzz. The ratings for Monday Night games on ESPN this year
were the lowest since 2008. The average ratings for "Monday Night
Football" were 7.6 with four-year viewer average of 12.8 million
viewers.
That may be more than acclaimed shows like Mad Men and Homeland which
get additional viewers from on-demand DVR recordings but that still
can't be a bright spot on schedule that had sub .500 team matchups for
ESPN to try everything they can to showcase. There were games that
were barely able to match the hype of ESPN promotions. The 6-7 Jets
against the 4-9 Titans? The 3-7 Panthers against the 2-8 Eagles? The
4-10 Lions facing up to a 6-0 Falcons?
If Hank Williams Jr. hadn't made his controversial comments about
President Obama and still doing his "Are you ready for some football"
opening skits you wonder if the song would suit the schedule ESPN has
been forced to telecast. Heck, even though the World Series between
the Tigers and the now-champion Giants wasn't watched by a lot of
people this year, at least it was better than the overly-hyped ESPN
Monday Night schedule this year.
Then there's also the access to the vast majority of NFL games on NFL
Red Zone, now given the many more subscribers thanks to the deal with
Time Warner, where fans can now watch every touchdown of every Sunday
afternoon game on the live Fox and CBS feed without having to fork
over lots of cash to buy a Direct TV dish or go to a sports bar to
watch all the games on every monitor.
Look, this Monday Night year hasn't been a total disappointment. There
was the great game in Washington where Robert Griffin III and the
Redskins outshone the now suddenly struggling champion Giants. There
was a lot of buzz over the replacement referees messing up a last
second call between the Packers and Seahawks that led to the end of
the regular referees being locked out. And Mike Turico and Jon Gruden
have chemistry as good as the duos of NBC's Michaels/Collinsworth,
Fox's Buck/Aikman, and CBS' Nantz/Simms.
But the schedule that ESPN has had the past few years isn't worthy of
the title "Monday Night Football". Now even though ESPN doesn't have a
single chunk of the NFL post-season and the rights for sports' other
big television events have been retained like March Madness on CBS
(thanks in part to Turner) and the Olympics on NBC, they still have a
lot of great sports and games to watch on the biggest source of sports
for fans of all sports in America.
With all the changes in how the NFL is watched these days and the
changes in how games are scheduled in prime-time, "Monday Night
Football" isn't the premiere showcase of the NFL anymore. The title
"Monday Night Football" still stands and ESPN may hype every game all
it wants, but "Monday Night Football" is still nothing more than just
football on Monday night.
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6831/Sunday-Night-Football-hurts-MNF-demand
BOULDER, Colorado—NBC aired its first Sunday Night Football Broadcast
6 August, 2006. ABC’s longstanding juggernaut, Monday Night Football,
moved from network TV where it had aired since 1970 to ESPN. While
ESPN, powered by ABC and Disney, has still maintained very favorable
ratings, Sunday Night Football commands some of the most valuable
airtime of all fall programming.
According to Sports Business Digest’s analysis of the 2010 Fall TV
line up, Sunday Night Football topped US$400,000 for each 30-second
ad, which was up 22% from 2009 and led all fall programming, with the
exception of American Idol, as the most expensive airtime for
advertisers. The ad premium is primarily attributable to “SNF” being a
program most likely watched live and not recorded.
Clearly, the success of Sunday Night Football has been enjoyed by both
viewers and networks, but has it benefited the hotel industry? Like
viewership, was the appeal of traveling for the Monday Night Football
game shifted to Sunday Night?
To help answer these questions, we analyzed 10 seasons of Monday Night
and Sunday Night Football data from 2001 through 2010. Using the daily
data set of STR, the parent company of HotelNewsNow.com, we analyzed
each host town’s game-night hotel performance. As each NFL stadium is
uniquely located in the surrounding metropolitan area, we preformed
radial searches relative to each stadiums locale. The resulting
average stadium market incorporated approximately 60 hotels within a
five-mile radius of the stadium.
For this analysis, a simple occupancy breakdown would not suffice
because, in general, hotel dynamics between Sunday night and Monday
night will differ regardless of NFL games, due primarily to corporate
business travel patterns. Additionally, hotel economic cycles ebb and
flow more than football fandom, so we needed to avoid potential
economic abnormalities that could skew the data. As such, we created a
“control group” to benchmark against each host MNF/SNF market. The
control group is comprised of all 31 NFL markets (remember the Giants
and Jets share a market) and each host city’s occupancy is indexed
against an aggregate set of all the other pro football towns in
America. This helps normalize economic noise to more reasonably test
the impact of the Sunday Night Football phenomenon.
When it comes to local occupancy, Sunday Night Football rules!
Below is a chart featuring hotel data for Monday Night Football before
Sunday Night Football aired (ABC 2001 – 2005 seasons) versus Monday
Night Football after Sunday Night Football aired (ESPN 2006- 2010
seasons). Again, the index represents the host city’s occupancy
performance benchmarked against all NFL cities (i.e. a 131% occupancy
index indicates the host city had a 31% occupancy premium over all NFL
cities).
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/media/Image/Charts/20111031_chart1.gif
The chart above shows prior to the airing of Sunday Night Football,
Monday Night Football host cities enjoyed an occupancy premium of
slightly more than 31%. After Monday Night Football moved to ESPN, the
host city occupancy premium dropped by approximately 1.2%, which isn’t
terribly significant, but yields the question: Did the hotel demand
shift to Sunday night?
The chart below incorporates Sunday Night Football host city data for
seasons 2006-2010.
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/media/Image/Charts/20111031_chart2.gif
Highlighted by the graph above, Sunday Night Football host cities
garnered a 36% occupancy premium, which not only outpaced Monday Night
Football host cities during the same five-season period but also
outpaced Monday Night Football prior to SNF ever airing.
Anecdotally, the data appears to suggest Sunday Night Football host
cities garnered more hotel demand than Monday Night Football cities
ever did in the past decade.
There are reasons for this trend outside of football alone. One
obvious explanation is Sunday can be made into a long weekend and fans
do not miss as much work. Another factor that we will explore in part
two of the article series: Sunday night hotels are cheaper … or are
they?
Keep reading for more articles on the Sunday Night Football
phenomenon, including whether hotels do better if the home team wins,
and what teams bring the most hotel demand with them.
By Omari Stridiron
December 27, 2012 10:22 am
Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National
Football League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from
ABC after 35 years, the all-sports superpower cable network has pulled
out all the stops to not only heavily promote every game but treat it
like an event no matter who is playing. They devote most of their
Sportscenters before the game, to the game.
They have an hour and a half of "NFL Monday Night Countdown" devoted
to not only talk about the game but to put player interview after
player interview on the players in the game. It's complete overkill,
but hey with billions of dollars being spent each year and since the
"worldwide leader in sports" doesn't have the Super Bowl or a single
NFL playoff game to it's endless list of sports properties, ESPN does
everything possible to make "Monday Night Football" a highly watchable
event.
We know that many NFL regular season games are like an event. Tens of
millions tune in to the big match ups where ever they are televised -
whether it's on ESPN, CBS, FOX, NBC, or even the new "Thursday Night
Football" on NFL Network.
With so many ways of watching the NFL football these days, does
"Monday Night Football" matter anymore? Or better yet does it still
exist? Yes, there is still NFL Football on Monday nights in the
regular season.
This is not the 70s, 80s, and 90s anymore when "Monday Night Football"
on ABC was not only the biggest prime-time sports series on television
but also where the NFL would put their biggest match ups on the Monday
night schedule. The days of Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, and "Dandy"
Don Meredith are long gone.
The great Al Michaels now calls games with his still great "miracles"
voice with Chris Collinsworth on NBC. But a huge culture change has
happened in the past few decades that have changed how we view the NFL
as an event.
Before ESPN took over the Monday night package there were only two
networks to view the NFL in prime-time: ABC on Monday nights and ESPN
on Sunday nights.
Now there are three: NBC for Sunday nights, ESPN for Monday nights,
and the NFL Network for 13 out of the 17 weeks of the regular season.
And even though the NBC Thanksgiving night showdown was a humongous
blowout with the stable Patriots destroying the lost Jets, the game
still attracted high viewership. The NFL Network used to have Thursday
games for for only two months, but the league expanded the length of
the schedule to get more cable subscribers like Time Warner to put the
channel on it's list of cable channels and it worked.
The ratings for the NFL Network's Thursday night games were big and
almost as big as an audience for Simon Cowell's "X Factor" on Fox.
Also, NBC has something ESPN does not: Flexible scheduling. That helps
NBC tremendously because they can get games late in the season, like
the Cowboys vs Redskins NFC East divisional showdown, from CBS and Fox
placing them in the now-coveted 8:20PM slot and helping NBC's "Sunday
Night Football" to become the most-watched prime-time show on
television: beating out American Idol.
Most of the games on Monday Nights have been dull and they have been
with little buzz. The ratings for Monday Night games on ESPN this year
were the lowest since 2008. The average ratings for "Monday Night
Football" were 7.6 with four-year viewer average of 12.8 million
viewers.
That may be more than acclaimed shows like Mad Men and Homeland which
get additional viewers from on-demand DVR recordings but that still
can't be a bright spot on schedule that had sub .500 team matchups for
ESPN to try everything they can to showcase. There were games that
were barely able to match the hype of ESPN promotions. The 6-7 Jets
against the 4-9 Titans? The 3-7 Panthers against the 2-8 Eagles? The
4-10 Lions facing up to a 6-0 Falcons?
If Hank Williams Jr. hadn't made his controversial comments about
President Obama and still doing his "Are you ready for some football"
opening skits you wonder if the song would suit the schedule ESPN has
been forced to telecast. Heck, even though the World Series between
the Tigers and the now-champion Giants wasn't watched by a lot of
people this year, at least it was better than the overly-hyped ESPN
Monday Night schedule this year.
Then there's also the access to the vast majority of NFL games on NFL
Red Zone, now given the many more subscribers thanks to the deal with
Time Warner, where fans can now watch every touchdown of every Sunday
afternoon game on the live Fox and CBS feed without having to fork
over lots of cash to buy a Direct TV dish or go to a sports bar to
watch all the games on every monitor.
Look, this Monday Night year hasn't been a total disappointment. There
was the great game in Washington where Robert Griffin III and the
Redskins outshone the now suddenly struggling champion Giants. There
was a lot of buzz over the replacement referees messing up a last
second call between the Packers and Seahawks that led to the end of
the regular referees being locked out. And Mike Turico and Jon Gruden
have chemistry as good as the duos of NBC's Michaels/Collinsworth,
Fox's Buck/Aikman, and CBS' Nantz/Simms.
But the schedule that ESPN has had the past few years isn't worthy of
the title "Monday Night Football". Now even though ESPN doesn't have a
single chunk of the NFL post-season and the rights for sports' other
big television events have been retained like March Madness on CBS
(thanks in part to Turner) and the Olympics on NBC, they still have a
lot of great sports and games to watch on the biggest source of sports
for fans of all sports in America.
With all the changes in how the NFL is watched these days and the
changes in how games are scheduled in prime-time, "Monday Night
Football" isn't the premiere showcase of the NFL anymore. The title
"Monday Night Football" still stands and ESPN may hype every game all
it wants, but "Monday Night Football" is still nothing more than just
football on Monday night.
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6831/Sunday-Night-Football-hurts-MNF-demand
BOULDER, Colorado—NBC aired its first Sunday Night Football Broadcast
6 August, 2006. ABC’s longstanding juggernaut, Monday Night Football,
moved from network TV where it had aired since 1970 to ESPN. While
ESPN, powered by ABC and Disney, has still maintained very favorable
ratings, Sunday Night Football commands some of the most valuable
airtime of all fall programming.
According to Sports Business Digest’s analysis of the 2010 Fall TV
line up, Sunday Night Football topped US$400,000 for each 30-second
ad, which was up 22% from 2009 and led all fall programming, with the
exception of American Idol, as the most expensive airtime for
advertisers. The ad premium is primarily attributable to “SNF” being a
program most likely watched live and not recorded.
Clearly, the success of Sunday Night Football has been enjoyed by both
viewers and networks, but has it benefited the hotel industry? Like
viewership, was the appeal of traveling for the Monday Night Football
game shifted to Sunday Night?
To help answer these questions, we analyzed 10 seasons of Monday Night
and Sunday Night Football data from 2001 through 2010. Using the daily
data set of STR, the parent company of HotelNewsNow.com, we analyzed
each host town’s game-night hotel performance. As each NFL stadium is
uniquely located in the surrounding metropolitan area, we preformed
radial searches relative to each stadiums locale. The resulting
average stadium market incorporated approximately 60 hotels within a
five-mile radius of the stadium.
For this analysis, a simple occupancy breakdown would not suffice
because, in general, hotel dynamics between Sunday night and Monday
night will differ regardless of NFL games, due primarily to corporate
business travel patterns. Additionally, hotel economic cycles ebb and
flow more than football fandom, so we needed to avoid potential
economic abnormalities that could skew the data. As such, we created a
“control group” to benchmark against each host MNF/SNF market. The
control group is comprised of all 31 NFL markets (remember the Giants
and Jets share a market) and each host city’s occupancy is indexed
against an aggregate set of all the other pro football towns in
America. This helps normalize economic noise to more reasonably test
the impact of the Sunday Night Football phenomenon.
When it comes to local occupancy, Sunday Night Football rules!
Below is a chart featuring hotel data for Monday Night Football before
Sunday Night Football aired (ABC 2001 – 2005 seasons) versus Monday
Night Football after Sunday Night Football aired (ESPN 2006- 2010
seasons). Again, the index represents the host city’s occupancy
performance benchmarked against all NFL cities (i.e. a 131% occupancy
index indicates the host city had a 31% occupancy premium over all NFL
cities).
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/media/Image/Charts/20111031_chart1.gif
The chart above shows prior to the airing of Sunday Night Football,
Monday Night Football host cities enjoyed an occupancy premium of
slightly more than 31%. After Monday Night Football moved to ESPN, the
host city occupancy premium dropped by approximately 1.2%, which isn’t
terribly significant, but yields the question: Did the hotel demand
shift to Sunday night?
The chart below incorporates Sunday Night Football host city data for
seasons 2006-2010.
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/media/Image/Charts/20111031_chart2.gif
Highlighted by the graph above, Sunday Night Football host cities
garnered a 36% occupancy premium, which not only outpaced Monday Night
Football host cities during the same five-season period but also
outpaced Monday Night Football prior to SNF ever airing.
Anecdotally, the data appears to suggest Sunday Night Football host
cities garnered more hotel demand than Monday Night Football cities
ever did in the past decade.
There are reasons for this trend outside of football alone. One
obvious explanation is Sunday can be made into a long weekend and fans
do not miss as much work. Another factor that we will explore in part
two of the article series: Sunday night hotels are cheaper … or are
they?
Keep reading for more articles on the Sunday Night Football
phenomenon, including whether hotels do better if the home team wins,
and what teams bring the most hotel demand with them.
Lubow
Jan 11, 2013, 9:54:23 AM1/11/13
to
"TMC" <tmc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:999ce51e-3488-4c11...@x10g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
http://www.footballnation.com/content/why-monday-night-football-is-no-longer-relevant/20397/
>By Omari Stridiron
> December 27, 2012 10:22 am
> Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National Football
> League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from ABC after 35
> years, the all-sports \
> superpower cable network has pulled out all the stops to not only heavily
> promote every game
One of the NFL's problems is indeed overexposure but more significantly is
>By Omari Stridiron
> December 27, 2012 10:22 am
> Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National Football
> League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from ABC after 35
> years, the all-sports \
> superpower cable network has pulled out all the stops to not only heavily
> promote every game
the quality (or lack thereof) of its product. As was brilliantly enunciated
in the NY Giants newsgroup, the NFL is a rope-a-dope league suffering from:
Too many teams.
When sanity ruled the National Pastime in 1899, the National League dropped
four teams to bump up the overall quality of the product. The NFL should
consider dropping teams whose home games are continuously blacked-out,
There are stadiums opposing team owners hate visiting because the playing
fields suck and the visiting teams' take of the gate is miniscule.
Too many games.
Too many injuries from too many games. Unless fans like paying $400 or $500
per ticket to see the practice squads imitate the varsity, the number of
games per season should revert back to 14.
Too few players.
Every year another college drops its football program. The best college
athletes opt out of football for sports where there is some degree of
longevity without the risk of getting crippled for life.
euphemism
Jan 11, 2013, 7:21:35 PM1/11/13
to
On 1/11/2013 8:54 AM, Lubow wrote:
>
> "TMC" <tmc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:999ce51e-3488-4c11...@x10g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.footballnation.com/content/why-monday-night-football-is-no-longer-relevant/20397/
>
>
>> By Omari Stridiron
>> December 27, 2012 10:22 am
>> Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National
>> Football League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from
>> ABC after 35 years, the all-sports \
>> superpower cable network has pulled out all the stops to not only
>> heavily promote every game
>
>
> One of the NFL's problems is indeed overexposure but more significantly
> is the quality (or lack thereof) of its product. As was brilliantly
> enunciated in the NY Giants newsgroup, the NFL is a rope-a-dope league
> suffering from:
>
> Too many teams.
> When sanity ruled the National Pastime in 1899, the National League
> dropped four teams to bump up the overall quality of the product. The
> NFL should consider dropping teams whose home games are continuously
> blacked-out, There are stadiums opposing team owners hate visiting
> because the playing fields suck and the visiting teams' take of the gate
> is miniscule.
Miniscule? That's a strange word to use to describe the gate at any NFL
>
> "TMC" <tmc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:999ce51e-3488-4c11...@x10g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.footballnation.com/content/why-monday-night-football-is-no-longer-relevant/20397/
>
>
>> By Omari Stridiron
>> December 27, 2012 10:22 am
>> Ever since 2006, when ESPN bought sole TV rights to the National
>> Football League's famous "Monday Night Football" and moving it from
>> ABC after 35 years, the all-sports \
>> superpower cable network has pulled out all the stops to not only
>> heavily promote every game
>
>
> One of the NFL's problems is indeed overexposure but more significantly
> is the quality (or lack thereof) of its product. As was brilliantly
> enunciated in the NY Giants newsgroup, the NFL is a rope-a-dope league
> suffering from:
>
> Too many teams.
> When sanity ruled the National Pastime in 1899, the National League
> dropped four teams to bump up the overall quality of the product. The
> NFL should consider dropping teams whose home games are continuously
> blacked-out, There are stadiums opposing team owners hate visiting
> because the playing fields suck and the visiting teams' take of the gate
> is miniscule.
arena.
There are plenty of good teams that would have probably been killed off
by your formulas. I guess it doesn't currently describe YOUR favorite
team?
> Too many games.
> Too many injuries from too many games. Unless fans like paying $400 or
> $500 per ticket to see the practice squads imitate the varsity, the
> number of games per season should revert back to 14.
that we'll at least have only two of those torturous pre-season dog shows.
>
> Too few players.
> Every year another college drops its football program. The best college
> athletes opt out of football for sports where there is some degree of
> longevity without the risk of getting crippled for life.
>
rt
Jan 11, 2013, 7:28:25 PM1/11/13
to
On Jan 11, 4:21 pm, euphemism <euphem...@minspring.com> wrote:
> On 1/11/2013 8:54 AM, Lubow wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > "TMC" <tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> On 1/11/2013 8:54 AM, Lubow wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >news:999ce51e-3488-4c11...@x10g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
> >http://www.footballnation.com/content/why-monday-night-football-is-no...
college has dropped football is the economic reality of Title IX
compliance. Lack of players? Whatever. The NBA moans that great
forwards are instead playing TE in college and pro ball.
rt
euphemism
Jan 11, 2013, 8:04:52 PM1/11/13
to
other... but the idea that schools are dropping their football programs
is the worst shit I have heard in pretty much forever.
The reality of the NFL is that players have been getting bigger and
faster for years and that has been often noticed. Compare the players
from the '70s to those of the current NFL and it's scary how ripped and
cut these guys are today. We just had a season where there were a
ridiculous number of rookie QB's starting and excelling. Where's the
case for talent dilution or that all the best athletes are opting for
other sports?
Lubow
Jan 12, 2013, 12:58:40 PM1/12/13
to
"euphemism" <euph...@minspring.com> wrote in message
news:68mvqq....@news.alt.net...
> There are plenty of good teams that would have probably been killed off by
> your formulas. I guess it doesn't currently describe YOUR favorite team?
If eliminating some teams means the customers get to see the best players on
> your formulas. I guess it doesn't currently describe YOUR favorite team?
the field instead of on the DL, I'm all for that. If you are not into
professional excellence, perhaps college football would be more to your
liking. In fact I'm for anything that keeps the best players playing for as
long as possible while the customers are getting their money's worth.
As for my favorite teams...
My favorite teams are financially sound. They fill the stadiums and their
fans get to see the home games on the tube. Owners of visiting teams have
no problem over the condition of the playing field or getting a fair
visitors cut of the gate.
You want a team that should kicked out? Oakland is a good example for
starters. No doubt it has a proud history but it is not financially sound
for the 21st century NFL which means it is not competitively sound. Players
have to play on the dirt part of the infield. According to Forbes, the team
has little net worth on the open market thus making it difficult to get
financing. Many or most of the home games are blacked out which may explain
why the owners get bupkis as the visiting team's share of the receipts.
Name just one NFC owner or any out of division AFC owner that relishes the
thought of playing in Oakland and whether his cut of the gate even pays the
expense of getting the players and the support personnel into that
hell-hole.
Jacksonville is another candidate for low valuation with little prospects of
financial parity with the rest of the NFL.
For me, the ideal NFL configuration is two conferences with two divisions
each. In this way each team will play most of its games within its
division, not the other way around as the NFL is currently configured. To
put it another way more rivalries like Dolphins vs. Jets, Cowboys vs.
Redskins or Giants vs. Eagles would be more meaningful with more fan
interest than say Giants vs. Chiefs or Eagles vs. Broncos.
J Lunis
Jan 12, 2013, 2:42:12 PM1/12/13
to
late in the season, as do other sports. Not so enjoyable for fans
(KC-level) fans but enjoyable to most of the paying audience. That has
nothing to do with MNF. As for early in teh season, appeal to the
broadest audience. A concept that works for types of shows.
euphemism
Jan 12, 2013, 6:03:19 PM1/12/13
to
the league. The Patriots weren't so much in the good old days and the
Bills may have gone to four straight Super Bowls, but they haven't been
to the playoffs in a long time. These teams may well switch places at
some time in the future even if you don't see that possibility.
The league has its revenue sharing and parity scheemes and over all
that's good for the pro game. Television rules the roost and if your
city lacks a decent TV market you're in trouble. The Raiders will
return... at some point the ownership will cycle to someone with a
fucking brain and they will rebuild that franchise.
Remysun
Jan 14, 2013, 11:20:04 AM1/14/13
to
On Jan 11, 9:54 am, "Lubow" <dynamitem...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Too many teams.
> When sanity ruled the National Pastime in 1899, the National League dropped
> four teams to bump up the overall quality of the product.
That argument doesn't hold because it allowed for the formation of the
> Too many teams.
> When sanity ruled the National Pastime in 1899, the National League dropped
> four teams to bump up the overall quality of the product.
American League and the World Series, effectively doubling the size of
Major League Baseball.
Lubow
Jan 14, 2013, 2:27:45 PM1/14/13
to
"Remysun" <remys...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:613dfc63-2049-4b54...@bx10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
below will indicate, reverse expansion worked for the fans.
As a league, in 1900 the National League batted .279. In 2012, the NL
batted .254
In 1900 the NL league-wide ERA was 3.69. In 2012 league wide ERA was 3.94
The only negative is in fielding. In 1900 the NL league-wide fielding
average with the small gloves was .942. In 2012 the NL league-wide fielding
average was .983
The 1900 pennant winning Brooklyn team batted an unbelievable .293. Chicago
had the worst team batting average at a very respectable .260. In 2012
Colorado batted a league high of .274 while Houston had the league's worst
hitting at .236.
But getting back to football...
Your argument does not hold because all four networks (Fox, CBS, NBC and
Disney) are tied to the NFL. In 1901 there were no networks. Therefore the
chances of another AFL is less than remote.
BTW, none of the above changes the reality that NFL depth is weak and
diluted. It's truly the rope-a-dope league.
Translation: whichever team has more varsity players suited-up in December
will have the best chances of winning through the playoffs.
Michael OConnor
Jan 14, 2013, 7:01:50 PM1/14/13
to
> BTW, none of the above changes the reality that NFL depth is weak and
> diluted. It's truly the rope-a-dope league.
>
today it is 313 million, a 54 percent increase. In 1970 there were 26
NFL teams, today there are 32, a 24 percent increase. Many sports
fans wax romantically for the old days, but the relative gap between
the best teams and worst teams was much higher in the 50's and 60's
than today. These days it is easier to become competitive via free
agency; back then, all the good teams hung onto the their best players
for their entire careers, but they can't do that anymore. If you rank
the players back then vs. today, I'm sure you would find, on a
percentage basis, there are just as many substandard QB's in the 60's
and 70's as today.
Lubow
Jan 14, 2013, 8:40:16 PM1/14/13
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"Michael OConnor" <mpoco...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:71d96c2e-155a-4315...@x3g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> BTW, none of the above changes the reality that NFL depth is weak and
> diluted. It's truly the rope-a-dope league.
>
> I have to disagree here. In 1970 the US population was 203 million, today
> it is 313 million, a 54 percent increase.
fewer college football programs now than ten years ago. From that pool, the
best athletes are opting for sports where they can enjoy a ten year
longevity with unrestricted free agency instead of the NFL"s three year
longevity with the possibility of spending one's life in a wheelchair.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nfls-spin-average-career-length-2011-4
(2) It is impossible to compare players now vs. players of years past
because today careers are much shorter. E.g., C Ray Wietecha never missed a
game in ten years. How many linemen can say that?
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