The NFL is becoming more disturbing than appealing, and TV viewers are tuning out

[tk13]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...b06_story.html

Excerpts:

The NFL is becoming more disturbing than appealing, and TV viewers are tuning out

By Sally Jenkins Columnist October 31

The NFL’s firm grip on the psyche is based in the fact that it’s the most real, live event on live television. Every game is a character-driven story and a high-speed chase in which the action and the stakes of a collision are genuine. But lately the NFL has seemed formulaic and lacking in a certain kind of authenticity. It’s no great mystery as to why the NFL’s ratings have been dropping: Viewers don’t especially like the stories they’re watching.

The numbers are striking. Through seven weeks, ratings were off for every prime-time incarnation of the NFL: “Sunday Night Football” by 19 percent, “Monday Night Football” by 24 percent and the dreaded Thursday night game by 18 percent. A variety of factors may be contributing to this dive, from the election to so-called “fragmentation” of mass media. But none of the explanations make as much sense as the simplest one: The NFL has put less appealing and more disturbing action on the screen, and viewers are turning it off.

Historian Michael Oriard has observed that the great attraction of the league is that it’s “the true reality TV,” in its most vital form. But the NFL is beginning to seem over-managed and over-staged. Constant commercials and interruptions by refs waving their arms do not produce “appointment viewing;” rather, they produce punts, ties and stasis. Look at the standings: A cluster of 18 teams, indistinguishable save for the colors of their shirts, are at .500 or worse and five more at 4-3. In other words, 23 teams are not must-see-TV to anyone but their most fervent fans. The constant advertisements and hail of yellow flags from overly officious officials make a PBS series seem fast-moving, with a clearer story line.

When rookie quarterback Dak Prescott led the Dallas Cowboys over the Philadelphia Eagles with his touchdown pass to Jason Witten in overtime late Sunday night, it was clear how much animation the league has been missing. But even that terrific game, which had high divisional stakes and featured a bright new star, was crushed in the ratings by Game 5 of the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians. It’s the first time since 2011 that a World Series game beat “Sunday Night Football.”

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Obviously, viewers are not finding the NFL as meaningful and important as they have in other seasons. Games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday, plus a handful of overseas trips for novelty games in London, have numbed the viewer. Only a handful of contests this past weekend felt like difference-makers, and those were disrupted by flags. One was between the New England Patriots and the Buffalo Bills, which was marred by five penalties in the first 10 minutes. When the Pats led 38-17 in the third quarter, where was the viewer to go? To Jets-Browns? Lions-Texans? Raiders-Buccaneers was close, but that meant suffering through a league-record 23 penalties against the Raiders for 200 yards.

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The NFL ratings malaise is being puzzled over by everyone from media executives to stock analysts, who offer a variety of speculative causes. Everything from fantasy football to Twitter live-streaming to the shorter attention spans and habits of millennials has been cited. But none of these entirely add up. Other sports aren’t suffering precipitous drops; NBA and Major League Baseball ratings have strengthened over the past year.

In looking for a difference, it’s hard to dismiss the coexisting facts that the NFL has ruined the flow of its on-field stories while experiencing a spate of deeply negative stories off the field — most of them self-inflicted and perpetuated, from the Deflategate four-game suspension of Tom Brady, to the spousal abuse case of place kicker Josh Brown. Donald Trump has blamed Colin Kaepernick for dissing the national anthem for the fall in ratings. If that’s a factor, then undoubtedly so are narratives involving concussions and domestic violence.

[DRU]

Watching the game now? This is one of the reasons. That was absolute horse $h1t.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by DRU

Watching the game now? This is one of the reasons. That was absolute horse $h1t.

LOL, I forget there was MNF... LOL, just LOL!

[Psyko Tek]

Originally Posted by tk13

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...b06_story.html

Excerpts:

you know,
I have a PC, or a console, or a phone and I can play any game I want on it
I love watching the chiefs play, but my gawd I swear I ****ing hate end around and bubble screens
a good D, and these guys are at least good, shut down by rules that favor the O


and then there is the fact that these guys are risking their lives every play

has it always been like this?

yeah probably

this shit is turning people off

I got no solution

just like muscle cars the nfl will go away or be nothing we want anymore

[Molitoth]

We have the technology to take human error out of football, yet we still have these zebras on the field making terrible judgement calls that realistically a human eye can't call in real time.

The amount of wrong PI calls that affect the outcome of a game, and the importance of over-officiating on unsportsman-like conduct for celebrations are drastically removing my interest from the NFL.

Let the players have fun, and start using technology.... watch the NFL become better.

[lcarus]

There's an injury on every other play now it seems. And I don't know the numbers but it seems the amount of ACL tears in the league are way way higher than they used to be.

[petegz28]

This started the beginning of the end....

Catches the ball....
Shows possession....
Butt hits the ground in bounds....
Still has control......

Play is over right there. Down by contact; Touchdown

But no...somehow Johnson was to maintain possession after he was down....

[Hydrae]

Originally Posted by Psyko Tek

just like muscle cars the nfl will go away or be nothing we want anymore

Um, what? Have you seen the number of Camaros, Mustangs, and Challengers on the road in the last decade? Those are just reborn muscle cars. They may have been gone for a while but they have come back big time (they are even going to start producing Dodge Cudas next year (disgusting, those were Plymouths!)).

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by Psyko Tek

just like muscle cars the nfl will go away or be nothing we want anymore

lol wut

[CanadianChiefs]

I've been watching the NFL my whole damn life and it feels different to me lately. The past 5 ish years many games have felt "scripted" and there have been so many clutch or magical moments that now when you see them, it feels almost normal. I would love to see statistics of how many of these "magical, low-percentage moments/comebacks, etc." have happened in comparison to the early 00's.

It's ridiculous and ever since the chiefs blowing 38-10 lead with Luck as the up and comer NFL marketing QBOTF making "history", then when Seattle threw the ball on the one yard line with Lynch and the subsequent interception it's felt phony as shit, then the Manning Super Bowl with Cam staring at his fumble and then after Manning's product placement just pissed me off and made me realize how terrible this shit is.

How many times does a team get to a big lead only for the team that is getting completely smacked around all of a sudden run down the field in 10 minutes to get like 17 points and make it a game? It's suspicious as hell. It never used to be like this. Sure there were momentum swings but how many coincidences can happen week in and week out? Coincidences don't feel like coincidences anymore...

It's become more of a product than a sport. This topic trigged me...

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by CanadianChiefs

I've been watching the NFL my whole damn life and it feels different to me lately. The past 5 ish years many games have felt "scripted" and there have been so many clutch or magical moments that now when you see them, it feels almost normal. I would love to see statistics of how many of these "magical, low-percentage moments/comebacks, etc." have happened in comparison to the early 00's.

It's ridiculous and ever since the chiefs blowing 38-10 lead with Luck as the up and comer NFL marketing QBOTF making "history", then when Seattle threw the ball on the one yard line with Lynch and the subsequent interception it's felt phony as shit, then the Manning Super Bowl with Cam staring at his fumble and then after Manning's product placement just pissed me off and made me realize how terrible this shit is.

How many times does a team get to a big lead only for the team that is getting completely smacked around all of a sudden run down the field in 10 minutes to get like 17 points and make it a game? It's suspicious as hell. It never used to be like this. Sure there were momentum swings but how many coincidences can happen week in and week out? Coincidences don't feel like coincidences anymore...

It's become more of a product than a sport. This topic trigged me...

I don't think it's coincidences as much as it is player safety is so bad right now that it's making survival in games a game of chance.

It's no longer about the best teams slugging it out. These days, it's about if your team is lucky enough not to get slugged by the injury bug. The Indy game swung wide open because of injuries. We lost Jamaal Charles, flowers, knile Davis in mid game after Houston and Hali were already playing at 75%. The next year, we play without Maclin and Houston. It's such a shitty way to lose. I get dealing with a few injuries here or there. But this is just getting nuts. The problem is... How exactly do you fix this?

I don't buy into rigging games. But I would agree that there is also way too much subjectivity in officiating that bad officiating swings games in unprecedented ways.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by Molitoth

We have the technology to take human error out of football, yet we still have these zebras on the field making terrible judgement calls that realistically a human eye can't call in real time.

The amount of wrong PI calls that affect the outcome of a game, and the importance of over-officiating on unsportsman-like conduct for celebrations are drastically removing my interest from the NFL.

Let the players have fun, and start using technology.... watch the NFL become better.

You think a computer is going to be able to make a PI call automatically? I'm not seeing that any time soon.

You might be able to automate forward progress/breaking the goal line and things like that.

Or do you want every pass play to be reviewed by humans?

[Molitoth]

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan

You think a computer is going to be able to make a PI call automatically? I'm not seeing that any time soon.

You might be able to automate forward progress/breaking the goal line and things like that.

Or do you want every pass play to be reviewed by humans?

I'm saying we need to have headsets from the replay booth DIRECTLY to the officials on the field.
Think about how fast the replay booth is displaying the correct call on the giant TV's in the stadium for the entire fanbase to disagree with... only for the play to not be challengable.

leading to...

Teams should be able to challenge any call on the field they want, to a limited amount of times. A Pass Interference call should be review-able. (Bill Belechik has been vocal about this)



Getting multiple calls WRONG per game is not making the game better.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan

You think a computer is going to be able to make a PI call automatically? I'm not seeing that any time soon.

You might be able to automate forward progress/breaking the goal line and things like that.

Or do you want every pass play to be reviewed by humans?

Dude. You're off base. I've posted all this before.

Remote sensing is ****ing cake, man. I have a decade old combine and it can count how many seeds per minute are being lost out the sieves or cleaning shoe, it constantly measures how many RPM each chain and belt shiv is turning (there are shitload), it measures how many pounds per second of grain is flowing into the grain tank - calculate variables of speed, GPS position, Overlap, header width, commodity weight - to produce a real time yield/acre at any given point in the field along with moisture samples every 15 seconds, it constantly measures the pressure at each injector, turbocharger pressures and blade positions, measures the density of the material in the return elevator, along with a whole mess of shit that I don't know what means.

I can remotely tell where my pivots are, the pressure at both ends, as well as the technology to speed up and slow down an electric motor (via frequency drive - I'm not smart enough to do the engineering enough to explain that one) to match pressures on the fly.

In the cab, I can know if my planter is dropping singluated seeds or doubles to give me real time population and singulation information. The rate monitor calculates shaft speed, compares it to GPS or radar speed, as well as plate size, to automatically increase or decrease planter drive speed to achieve required population. It can measure row unit downpressure and automatically adjust pneumatic pressures to achieve a predetermined downpressure as soil conditions change through the field.

My air drill has blockage monitors on every row to give me real time indicatiors from every row.

I have a closed system chemical meter that automatically meters chemical to .01% accuracy despite widely varying liquid densities.

Neighbors of mine have soil probes that remotely tell them in real time the saturation of water in the soil. Without moving from their desk

And I'm a shit poor dirt farmer.

The technology is there. It's reliable. It's cheap. It's tiny. It's all integratable.

If I can; 1. afford it, 2. use it effectively, there is no reason the bottomless pockets of the NFL can't.

[NJChiefsFan]

Originally Posted by Molitoth

I'm saying we need to have headsets from the replay booth DIRECTLY to the officials on the field.
Think about how fast the replay booth is displaying the correct call on the giant TV's in the stadium for the entire fanbase to disagree with... only for the play to not be challengable.

leading to...

Teams should be able to challenge any call on the field they want, to a limited amount of times. A Pass Interference call should be review-able. (Bill Belechik has been vocal about this)



Getting multiple calls WRONG per game is not making the game better.

One thing I know for sure is that losing a challenge for being correct is insane. Even with earning one back if you are correct twice, it's crazy.

[Sandy Vagina]

I don't watch a ton of college ball, but when I do, they seem to have a better system. They would huddle up for big calls that they soon learn are questionable, and then generally, correct the call in a reasonable amount of time.

.. and doesn't it seem like many of these refs are really ****ing old? Most old people I know can't see very well.. and their processes have become slow.