The San Francisco 49’ers can no longer play their games this year in their home stadium. Santa Clara County has banned contact sports due to spiking levels of the virus. So now they’re going to play three home games in Arizona. They still don’t know where they’re going to practice. If you have a big yard, give 'em a call.
A big Thanksgiving showdown was canceled and rescheduled, then rescheduled again for tonight and now is rescheduled for tomorrow night (Steelers - Ravens) because so many of the players tested positive. Ten Raven starters are out (assuming the game actually get played at all).
The White House has a tighter bubble.
Cancellations and postponements have become commonplace this season. And it’s not like baseball or basketball. When you only play a limited number of games a year, missing one or two is huge.
I get it. The NFL is merely a television show. Networks pay insane rights fees so if Rudy Guiliani has to play quarterback for the Denver Broncos they’ll still play (he'd have more success with that than being an attorney). But players are at risk during a worsening pandemic. Teams are depleted so they’re not at their competitive best. You never know when games are scheduled. Teams aren’t allowed to play at home.
I look forward to Super Bowl Thursday (rescheduled from Sunday because one team’s entire offensive line is out with COVID), and the game will be moved from Tampa (because, well it’s Florida and by then everyone in the state will test positive) to Dallas (where they don’t care if everyone tests positive) and everybody has their traditional Super Bowl parties for three. The halftime show with Weeknd should be spectacular -- one guy on the field.
If the NFL was smart it would just junk the rest of the season and play it out on Playstation.
I'll add another of huge factors; commercials MUST be shown and sports books MUST be active.
ReplyDeleteThe casinos and sports books have to have their wagers. They have wives and girlfriends to support (and may they never meet.) Sure, the prop bets may go from "Who'll score the first touchdown" to "Who'll live long enough to score a touchdown", but the money must roll.
And advertisers can sell their product to a far inferior product (ref: MLB and NBA), but they have to have SOMETHING to sell to! Even if some out of work stiffs have to play - because the sick players may be just slightly worse - there will by damn be a product on the air!
If the NFL let him play, Colin Caepernick would sell like pancakes at the Donner Family reunion party.
And let us play ALL our cards. NCAA football is even worse. The Ohio State University - arguably the best team in college football - may not qualify for the Big 10 Tournament because they haven't played enough games. At the point of so many cancelled games, and thus so many cases of a DEADLY virus - why risk the kids? I don't need a thrill on Saturday THAT badly.
Of course, the same reasons apply - which simply means our college students are in as critical life-threatening situation as the pros are.
I will point out that the Broncos scored the same number of points against the Saint's D with zero quarterbacks as the Buccaneers did with Tom Brady at QB.
ReplyDeleteLive sports is really the only thing networks have left to sell to advertisers at premium prices, since they're the only thing other than live/breaking news that views can't fast-forward through the commercials. So the networks are just as complicit as the NFL and the NCAA at trying to keep the games going (though from a target demo prospective, NBC did balk at doing Steelers-Ravens in prime time on Wednesday, because they got better across-the-board ratings last year with the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting show, and didn't want to preempt that for the game.)
ReplyDeleteYou also already have the college basketball season going, and the NBA begins training camp in a couple of days for their 2020-21 season, even though the 2020 season ended about 5-6 hours ago. The NBA playoff ratings were ... not good, especially the games pitted against Sunday Night Football on NBC, but it's the same thing as the NFL -- even low-rated live sports get more eyeballs on the ads than a time-shifted network show on video, so the networks want those games played.
John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported that if the NFL had played hardball with NBC on the Ravens at Steelers game, NBC was prepared to either move the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony to one of its cable networks or record the ceremony and broadcast it Thursday night. Last year's tree lighting ceremony drew 6.9 million viewers and a Steelers-Ravens game would have had more viewers. The NFL opted not to press the issue; presumably because the league's television partners have been so flexible with all the scheduling changes this season.
DeleteFelicity Huffman has been rewarded for her crimes with the starring role in a new baseball sitcom.
ReplyDeleteHope we get your thoughts on this news, Ken!
I thought Troy was going to tell us that Felicity Huffman was starting for the Broncos next week, then we'd have a game!
ReplyDeleteShameless Bill
DeleteNo, but Felicity's daughter is.
I guarantee that if Felicity Huffman starts at QB, Tony Romo will be able to call every play. Then again, he can do that with anybody.
ReplyDeleteSidebar, your honor:
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else feel the piped in applause takes you away from enjoying viewing the game, no matter the quality of the teams playing? I'm reminded a little of the "disco puck" Fox experimented with during the short time it held the rights to NHL.
NO accountability in the NFL Covid model for bad behavior - they have the best testing, the best healthcare and the WORST behavior - If they cannot play a game they should have to forfeit - that will be the only thing that will get the entitled players' attention!!
ReplyDeleteFriday Question: Do you think modern cable shows go too far with their depictions of nudity and sexual content? It just seems that every show produced in recent memory tries to force in as much nudity and sex as possible, regardless of relevance to the plot. Is it merely a cheap ploy to entice viewers or do you feel it can add something to a program?
ReplyDeleteDon't think I'd want Rudy Giuliani as QB. He's turned into a complete buffoon.
ReplyDeleteKen, I know you're a strong union guy, but maybe it's time for the NFL to bring in the scabs as they did in the strike year of 1987. They could probably raid the XFL since there's no guarantee that that league will survive until next year. How much worse could it be?
ReplyDeleteM.B.
Maybe it's because this season is a shit show, maybe it's because my team is once again an underachieving mess run by an egomaniac who won't shut up and isn't named Donald Trump. But for some reason, I just don't care about pro football. I watch, but I'm not invested like I was five years ago. It's background noise. Unfortunately, where I live, all of the local colleges suspended football, and high schools don't start for another few weeks.
ReplyDeleteWhen the league blackballed Kaepernick and continued its performative bullshit about the anthem and patriotism, the game stopped being fun for me. This from a league that didn't even televise the anthem during the regular season until the late-2000s. Kudos to them for finally listening to the players and understanding things like the Black Lives Matter movement, but I still have some issues with how Roger Goodell continuously misses the uprights by a mile on social issues, Covid included.
The Super Bowl halftime show is ripe for a hologram concert of all the dead superstars. Michael Jackson in a duet with Janis Joplin doing Ebony and Southern Comfort backed by Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix.
ReplyDeleteAnd Madden 2020 is so realistic I bet nobody would notice the difference.
And I say this as a fan....
ReplyDeleteThe Buffalo Bills will win the Super Bowl, because it'll be the only one that doesn't count.
For the record, I'm "Anonymous" at 12:57 PM. Dunno why it didn't take my name.
ReplyDelete@RickJ Even as a Cowboys fan, I would be perfectly fine with the Bills winning it all. I'd love to see a team repeat, as it hasn't happened in years, but the Bills are long overdue.
No way they would have done this to Bill Belichick. Yeah, the Broncos were stupid but they don't have the juice the Patriots do. (Or the Cowboys.)
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Belicheck would probably have figured out a way to win with no QB.
Forgive my ignorance, but can't an NFL team just forfeit, and spare everyone the trouble of playing a farce of a game? I'm no expert on football, but no quarterback is a disqualifier.
ReplyDeleteRe: Forfeiting games: Yes, an NFL team can forfeit a game, but then none of the players on either team would get paid.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, this long week of pro football is over, with Pittsburgh staying unbeaten by beating Baltimore 19-14. Their Sunday games have been rescheduled:
ReplyDelete* Monday: Washington at Pittsburgh, Fox
Buffalo vs. San Francisco at Arizona, ESPN
* Tuesday: Dallas at Baltimore, Fox
This means the Washington Football Team (WFT), which beat the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day, have 11 days between games. Dallas will have 12. Weird.
Don't care. When they started kneeling I bailed and I don't miss it at all.
ReplyDeleteNot having spectators at least makes games a helluva lot easier for the leagues to reschedule.
ReplyDeleteThe original slogan was If its inside the game, it is in the game meaning that what you see in IRL sports games, you can have that inside the Madden 21, it was later on shortened and changed to include things like EZMUT at the starting, the meaning is definitely the same but sounds cooler.
ReplyDelete