The Divide Between Analysis and Understanding

As America gets reacquainted with the NFL, there are plenty of people having live fantasy drafts over a few beers, rummaging stores for grills in order to tailgate and praying that their preachers speed up Sunday services for the next five months.

We already know what has made the NFL king of American entertainment over the last decade-plus; a few seasons of parity, a more passer-friendly style of play (though not exactly better) and the heavy dependence on the game for live viewing by partner TV networks. The latter, which provides the league revenue streams and advertising beyond comprehension, has been the bread and butter for the NFL since the 1960s under the stewardship of the late commissioner, Pete Rozelle.

With talk about the league pitching an additional eight-game Thursday night package to networks and some scheduling additions made by current league partners, there’s more to consume for the pigskin fan than ever before. 

However, one grossly overlooked aspect of this larger landscape for the NFL is that whether they care to admit so or not, there are still millions of fans that are not as savvy about every nuance of the game of football. [Honestly, the same goes for us media folks.]

Think of how many times Monday Night Football color commentators Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden give the breakdown of a play and the terminology they use will go over your head. Even for those who know that there are multiple names and variations of the same football plays, it’s not easy to keep up with what ‘Jaws’, ‘Chucky’ or any commentator that played or coached will spit out.

With the bandwidth for programming that networks like ESPN and even the league’s own network possess, there’s plenty of room for a show that can actually explain what in the hell these commentators and analysts are talking about. Who needs another hour of highlight reels or fantasy football uber-analysis when there can be a program or two that will demonstrate what a dig route is or why there’s a need to have different personnel for defensive schemes.



Courtesy of Fort Hayes State Univ.



For those who have known and loved football for years, a show like this can be a way of refining, if not outright testing, your knowledge of the game. Sure, you might have a Master’s in Madden Football and you probably like to debate at the water cooler, but there’s a good chance that you may have thought the Wildcat formation was invented four years ago (single-wing, anyone?). 

Fans who have been introduced to the game in recent years would get a better sense of what makes the superstars so respected and popular. Many came on board because they kept hearing about Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and numerous fantasy football references throughout pop culture. Yet, save for those hackneyed company lines about their greatness – they’re winners, what would their teams be like without them, etc. – there is a lack of understanding what it took for those players to become future first-ballot Hall of Famers. Why? Because explaining the craft is too long for advertising copy.

That guy looks MAD familiar!

Last year while live tweeting a Monday Night Football broadcast, I suggested that the league’s broadcasting partners should actually try teaching the game a bit. I received a few replies, stating that it wouldn’t be a good idea because it’s not the responsibility of said partners – ESPN, FOX, CBS and NBC – to explain anything, at least during the game.

Yet, this isn’t about the guys in the booth explaining each intricate detail as if this is “Football for Dummies”. While it’s not impossible, it would ignore the primary purpose to their jobs; to speak on the game as it happens to a rabid audience.

However, when you look through ESPNews’ programming slate and see nothing but “Highlight Express” or wonder if the over-the-air networks are really serving us with those ginormous pregame shows, it’s not unfathomable to see that there’s room to take a step back and educate people on the game with more than telestrators and corporate-sponsored studio ‘fields’.

The first day that we are 'Back to Football', we can use something new, can't we?

Maybe this program is a once-a-week in-season affair a la Showtime’s (formerly HBO's) Inside the NFL or those weekly fantasy sports shows on your local sports network. Throughout the season, the hosts – experienced television former NFL players and coaches – can use game and/or practice footage combined with live demonstrations from a local semi-pro or high school team to illustrate their points. How cool would it be to see the contrast between how an offensive line works for a pocket passer and a mobile quarterback? The hair-splitting differences between the brilliance of running backs Chris Johnson and Adrian Peterson? The real reasons why some teams play a 3-4 defense and a 4-3?

It may sound like one of those instructional tapes that you might buy for middle school-aged kids playing Pop Warner football. Yet, every season, people ask this Scribe how can they best learn the game in order to keep up with television analysis that continually goes over their heads. If this kind of program is crafted properly, it can be more than ‘suggested reading’ from the syllabus. It can be a great hors d'oeuvre before the football feast us pigskin gluttons scarf down every weekend.

Say What?!?!: In writing this post, an old one came to mind. Though younger generations have only come to know John Madden as the guy whose name graces the popular video game, he was once upon a time a great coach and the forefather to the sport’s color commentary. Whether some like it or not, with his retirement from the booth after the 2008 season, his approach to explaining the game to fans (though seemingly ineffective as the years went on) is sorely lacking these days.

Dubious

These have been dubious days in Bristol, for sure.

Whether it’s the leaked (and since removed) video of a nude Erin Andrews, the “Do Not Report” controversy of the Ben Roethlisberger sexual assault allegations, slight backlash over launching hyperlocal websites in several markets or the usually-criticized coverage of a handful of sports entities, ESPN has been taking a few punches to the jaw in the last two-plus weeks.

Now, it’s fairly common for non-ESPN media personalities and bloggers to throw a few jabs of their own in order to further the point that the Disney-owned sports behemoth has a few issues of journalistic integrity. In fact, there are some folks who make a pretty decent living off of assailing The Worldwide Leader among others in the sports media business. Yet, instead of piling on and adding fuel to the fire, I want to shed light on a point that so many of us seem to overlook; too many of us allow a single outlet dominate our media consumption.

Yes, ESPN is an omnipotent presence in the sports world; one that is imprinting its cachet across the globe after cornering national coverage here in the United States (along with a 20% ownership stake in Canada’s TSN). This doesn’t come from thin air, but from having the highest subscription fees in the cable industry at around $3.65. That dollar amount seems nominal, almost trivial, until you realize that this is per month per household ($3.65 X twelve months X over 98 million subscribing households = over $4.3 billion). Add the dollars from advertising partners – most notably beer makers such as MillerCoors and Budweiser – and there’s a financial strength that allows the network to do as it pleases.

Yes, the ‘E’ in the acronym stands for ‘Entertainment’ and many will have you believe that this is the very purpose of the network. Its critics lampoon the idea that the network provides sports programming with a twist; whether it’s by on-air debates; highly-hyped interviews or youth-oriented fare such as Madden Nation or its groundbreaking X Games. Its anchors and writers sprinkle in humor – snarky, silly or straight from the Pop Culture Reference Handbook – with their copies and articles as a point of differentiation from other established media outlets.

And yes, ESPN has used television’s most successful formulas. A) People of varying levels of attractiveness - lest we forget that Andrews is attractive to some, but not all – have helped carry television shows for years. B) People screaming to be heard are what make CNN, FOX News and CNBC tick. C) Details, schmetails; just use the major headline and talk about that forever and ever.

The true reason, though, why ESPN has such a presence, such a hold on us is that they are the leading national broadcaster of the actual games themselves. Their mammoth deals with organizations like the NFL, NBA, NASCAR and Major League Baseball are not for the permission to talk about what happened the night before or to strictly show thirty-second highlight clips. Linking up with UEFA (soccer/football), tennis and golf organizations of both genders and even the Professional Bowlers Association isn’t about having something to casually mention on ESPNews. Do you truly think that being in nearly every household in the United States is strictly because of SportsCenter? Hardly.

Sure, it’s hard to think of ESPN as just a broadcaster of the action as it’s equally difficult to think of the network as the lone provider of rumors, news and speculation. Yet, with fewer providers of games than providers of chatter, it might save us from more headaches if we understand that the games are why we avoid the stale, scripted fare every night.

Yet, if you enjoy hearing about the controversies coming out of Bristol, don’t let me stop you.

Overload

You will be overloaded over the next seven days, including Super Sunday.

With all due respect to the league that has granted this Scribe access over the past four years, the journey that the NFL takes – better yet, throws in front of us all – gets a little mind-numbing.

This may not be the ‘sexiest’ Super Bowl in recent memory, but it is the Super Bowl that provides a compelling matchup that should be able to stand on its own for a hopefully memorable NFL championship game. However, the idea that we need any more than two or three hours of coverage before the game begins is beyond comprehension.

Ninety hours from ESPN’s networks.

Fifty-five hours from the NFL Network (for the seventeen people who have it).

And just a measly six hours from NBC, the actual broadcaster of the Big Game.

For those of us who have something to do during the day such as work, go to school, look after the kids or sell illegal pharmaceuticals, we’re able to mostly avoid the über-analysis and absurd questions of Super Bowl Media Week. Even so, there is still an inordinant amount of programming waiting for us to smack our heads over and over again.

Yet, unlike most sports media personalities, your favorite blogger is going to give you some advice on how to avoid the Super Bowl Migraine that comes with actually paying attention:

First and foremost, don’t use sick days, Paid Time Off or vacation days to actually soak in any of the stuff coming out of the ‘idiot’ box. Not only will the multiple shows scramble your brain despite hearing the same stories over and over again, but you won’t have days to use later this year. Keep that vacation to the Caribbean during your favorite team’s bye week in mind.

Now, in terms of actual TV programming, there’s plenty to offer that you may have completely forgotten about because as this writer, your head has been wrapped around an oblong spherical brownish object thrown in the air for three hours. There are plenty of shows throughout the week that are showing new episodes, but if you have not been up-to-date on them, spend your next few evenings catching up on whatever shows you recorded on DVR or get yourself online… well, don’t watch anything on one of the MTV Networks or American Idol.

If you’re like this writer and barely keep up with actual scripted content, there’s a good chance that you are a true sports junkie. This week, the NBA offered a free week of their absolutely wonderful League Pass, giving cable subscribers a chance to see any game coast-to-coast. Look, the economy is shaky and people are looking to cost-cutting methods to save a buck or two. Yet, if you need to entertain yourself with something athletic, either invest in the half-season sports packages from the NBA, NHL or college basketball or find the nearest watering hole/restaurant. Hey, if you’re nice enough and willing to go Dutch on some (insert food delivery company here), I might let you swing by.

The Australian Open has been quite intriguing so far, so take a gander at either ESPN or The Tennis Channel to watch the matches that went on while you were sleeping.

If you are really hyped for some hitting and you’re fortunate to have the premium channels on demand, check out HBO and Showtime’s best matches of 2008 along with Sugar Shane Mosley’s absolute beatdown of Antonio Margarito that entertained many this past Saturday.

Of course, there was a time when there were about three television channels and only one TV per household. Some families huddled their one TV unit and watched iconic shows that still stand the test of time. Yet, some people did something that seems almost unheard of these days. They grabbed one of these. It’s not a bad idea to do so while all of the media in Tampa is sweating to find anything worth our attention when we wake the next morning.

Being that this was the first non-football weekend since the late summer, you probably reconnected with loved ones and friends, stepped out of the house on a Sunday, took a long weekend out of town or actually stepped inside a church for the first time since Easter. Have an encore performance.

If you’re like me and there are at least 10 movies in the past five years that you have not seen that people keep demanding that you watch, cherry pick a few for each day up until the minute leading to Sunday’s kickoff. I have a list of about thirty.

Finally, there are probably three or four websites you have been meaning to check out or some blogs that you haven’t caught up (ahem) with (ahem) in about a week (or month). This is a pretty good time to get all educated and whatnot.

By the time Super Sunday rolls around, you would swear that the last football game you watched was six years ago. You would be caught up with most of what you have missed in the last five months, you’d put a dent in a book that you haven’t touched since last May (Atlas Shrugged for this guy) and you would finally be able to say to your co-workers “yeah, I watched ‘Juno’ the other day and I got to say that it was kinda overrated”. You would be so far away from the gluttony of pre-pre-pre game coverage that you’d be convinced that Kurt Warner was the rookie that the Arizona Cardinals drafted last April.

Most importantly, you would actually look forward to watching the game itself.

Good luck and remember, by 6:30 PM this Sunday, it’ll be all over.

Seriously?

Bloggers love to assail "The Man" or whoever has a big enough budget and profile to shine the brightest. In the case of sports bloggers, it's all about giving ESPN hell for whatever reasons they can think of. While it would be pretentious and naiive to say I haven't wanted to throw stones for some questionable decisions by the Worldwide Leader, overall, it's hard to deny its impact on all of us who share a passion (or passing fancy) for sports.

That said, for the first and hopefully last time, I'll say that they are embarking on something phenomenally and mind-numbingly dumb.

When the Madison+Vine email hit my inbox a few minutes ago, I hoped that maybe I was dellusional or maybe my goodburger wasn't as well-cooked as I thought.

"You're not seeing this, Jay. You're really not."

Oh yes, I am.

Unless they have some ridiculous contract clause that keeps the cavemen in the ABC umbrella, the sun had set looooooooooooong ago.

Please. ESPN. Geico. Stop.

Timely

This is the greatest time of year for anyone that calls her or himself a sports fan. If you have a short attention span (with all due respect to those who suffer from any attention disorder), you'll be attached to your remote.

Your significant other or your children... not so much.

Because these two weeks (not to mention the past eight days) are sheer sports insanity, Scribe is found three pieces on 'the Internets' that are somewhat timely.

NFL: Prior to last year's NFL Draft, Len Pasquerelli (ESPN.com) wrote a interesting piece about the veteran players that lose their jobs as a result of the influx of rookies.

NBA: The new campaign for the NBA Playoffs inspired Time Magazine's recent cover. Does this speak more about the historic mess that is the Presidential race or the brilliance of the league's advertisements? For Scribe, the latter works.

MLB: Just as Scribe was searching for something related to the auspicious start by the Detroit Tigers - a team projected by some to represent the American League in the World Series - another ESPN piece surfaces. This comes from The Magazine and it speaks about a different sort of baseball feud that does not involve curses, buried jerseys and bleacher bums (no disrespect towards y'all Marlins and Rays fans). As if the Tigers and Chicago White Sox don't already have enough to fight about.

Walkie-Talkie

Well, not exactly walking, unless you consider walking around the apartment with slippers on with a cellphone in your hand.

For those who listen to my New York Giants reports on WCHR's 'What's Going On', I spend a little more time on the show from time to time, depending on the topic. Today, we will continue the at-large discussion on the Sean Taylor case. Tune in today at 3:00PM on 90.3 FM or online at either whcr.org or myspace.com/whcr.

Say What?!?!: There are a few articles that I feel are worth the read in regards to this tragedy. If you have not read them, take the time to do so. From ESPN, Wayne Drehs finds some reactions from several NFL players who feel that pro athletes have huge bullseyes on their backs. Also Len Pasquerelli of the Worldwide Leader has one of the few articles that boldly deal with the reality of the situation for the Washington Redskins. Finally, another personal favorite, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports wants folks to really think of the kind of year this as been for the NFL. However, do try to enjoy these games, if only for a moment.