Posted on 02/04/2016 8:48:44 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Football, especially NFL football, has oversaturated the media for fifty years. While baseball has to be followed on the radio or in the newspaper (aside from special subscriptions on the Internet and on television), ever single freaking game of the NFL is on regular cable/satellite/network TV.
As the country has progressively secularized the Superbowl and "Super sunday" have become a national "holy day," superseding all others. Even the other networks assume that everyone's going to be watching "The Game" and schedule their shows in accordance with this, even creating special "halftime shows."
Furthermore, NFL football is not family fare and hasn't been for a very, very, very long time (and the Superbowl is the worst). It's an ugly, brutal, violent game highlighting the absolute worst in American life ("violence punctuated by committee meetings")--especially as played by the professionals. I've never seen the appeal . . . ever.
Plus of course the rules are so bizarre and esoteric. What kind of game is played in five second spurts? Or so thoroughly regulates simply passing the ball? Football players may be stereotyped as dunces, but as far as I'm concerned anyone who can follow the complicated rules of this game is a genius.
Compare this with baseball, the Great American Game, a mystical touchstone of all Americans regardless of race, religion, or political ideology. Look at its mythology, its history. See the beauty of a game that rivals chess with regard to strategy, that has no mandated violence, and that, played as it is without reference to a clock, could theoretically go on forever.
It's baseball that ought to have every game on television where we can all see them--provided they get rid of interleague play, the designated hitter, astroturf, and put the Brewers and Astros back in their correct leagues. Oh, and split MLB into two distinct organizations again.
I thought the hockey broadcast with the blazing puck trail was a good idea. Apparently not as they don’t do it anymore.
If the MLB was popular enough it would be everywhere. The NFL understood TV better than any other sport in the early days, that’s why they dumped the local contracts and went national (though note, only the primetime and playoff games are broadcast truly nationally, the Sunday afternoon games are regional). It’s really a matter of knowing the market. It also helps football that it has the exact same structure as dramatic TV. Drama writing for a long time was ruled by “the rule of 3”: tell them what you’re going to show them, show them, tell them what they just saw. Which exactly matches the TV announcers predicting the play, then the play, then they explain the play.
Of course some of it is a matter of what you know about the game. You complain that football is about 5 second bursts, but that’s really only if you don’t understand the game, people who follow the game know that a “play” really starts with who gets put on the field, personal selections, presnap reads, adjustments by both sides to what they think the other side is doing, those are things that actually decide who is going to win the “burst”. For those who really understand the game often times the “burst” is kind of anti-climactic, it’s the least interesting part of the whole play.
And those who don’t understand baseball can lodge the same criticism of baseball. For the uninitiated baseball is the pitcher shaking his head a lot and then the “burst” of the pitch, which usually doesn’t get hit, and even if it does it’s all over in 10 seconds tops. Those who understand the game see it differently, but those who don’t see baseball the same way you see football.
The problem is there is a baseball game almost every day, missing one game doesn’t mean a heck of a lot, in the big scheme of things. But every football game is crucial, since there are so few of them.
I thought it was a good idea, but it did look goofy. Now with HDTVs it really isn’t necessary anymore, you actually can see the puck now unless it’s in the shadow of the near boards.
Yeah the 162 game season really damages baseball in many ways. Even serious baseball fans I know go through a couple of stretches a year where they just check the standings once a week. You pretty much have to have no responsibilities in life to really follow the sport or even 1 team. In football if you catch the once a week game and some pre-game show you can be pretty well in the know on your team.
In smaller communities the success of a local team can be a huge economic boon. Everything from local restaurants to souvenir shops.
That's what I do. And that's the beauty of the game. Baseball is a marathon while football is a sprint.
Football is a Goliath. But remember what happened to Goliath at the end. ;)
Same here. I'm a huge football fan. But it's quite possible that in 10 years from now, I may no longer follow the sport because I would be repulsed by it.
Baseball is an ultra marathon. I’m sure the TV networks showing games don’t think it’s beautiful that fans are free to ignore the game for weeks at a time. The game almost demands all fans to be casual fans, at least all the ones with jobs.
That's what I like about baseball. Laid back atmosphere. Easy to go to a ballpark anytime you feel like it.
Then when I'm retired, I can be a rabid fan, need to find something to occupy my time, I guess.
When I made one. Nothing like it.
The reason kids are burning out in their early teens is that they have been in sports since peewees at age four or five.
So they are remarkably good at age 13 or 14 and walk away within the year.
Their lives have been nothing but the sport.
Kids need these sports when in high school and late jr high. Not when little. If parents kept them out of the sports early and let them play later there would be a different attitude towards the game. They would be playing because they love it. Not because that is what they have been signed up for.
Is future bleak for Super Bowl?
It is for Denver.
Hockey is a game that is 10 times better in person then on television.
I agree
I would totally watch gladiator fights.
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