Is This Necessary?

I can hardly watch pro football on television anymore. There are the incessant commercials, many more than in the past, that have radically changed the game. The more important the game, the more commercials. This is readily apparent to those of us who actually attend games and are subjected to pauses in the game that seem not only unnecessary but uncomfortably long. It's very hard to find statistics about the amount of commercial time in, say, an NFL playoff game, but I would bet plenty that it's much more than it was 20 years ago, and much much more than 50 years ago when TV first aired the games.

So players get a lot more down time to recover from the brutality of the game resulting in a game that is much more brutal. Not long ago I remarked to a friend that I was increasingly uncomfortable with the college game due to the prevalence of thuggery among the players and he responded that they need to play like thugs in order to survive. My friend is right, I fear.

Other changes in the game have had the same effect. Unlimited substitution has created specialized defenses for particular situations for example. Equipment has improved tremendously. And of course the players are faster and bigger, the last abetted in no small part by the development of anabolic steroids.

So brutality is the metier of the game today which in turn has brought in the erstwhile fans of brutal sports like boxing. Speed is the antidote and, of course, well rested players will run faster contributing again to more brutality. Force as a function of speed. Force and speed have replaced power and stamina as key elements thus washing out a lot of the game's subtle aspects. Might as well watch roller derby.

The basic problem is that the game has become a branch of the television industry meaning it's no longer a sport but a form of entertainment. The game is tailored for maximum appeal, so not only is brutality promoted, but rules are continually tweaked to increase offense and the number of last minute victories. From the television standpoint the game is managed to increase the number of viewers so you get a lot of empty talk, purporting to analyze or "break down" the game, a particular play, coaches' strategies, what "adjustments" need to be made, or any number of items. The words in quotation marks are words one frequently hear on telecasts. As near as I can tell they don't mean anything more than "talk about".

One of my pet peeves, and others will be brought forward over time, is the bogus pass interference call. The pass interference rule was brought into the game to penalize a defensive player who knocked down or bumped an offensive player as the latter was about to catch a forward pass. This has morphed and grown over time to penalize any contact other than incidental. The first problem arises from the fact that the penalty assumes the pass will be caught. This is from the original intent that this was an egregious foul committed in desperation to forestall a sure completion. So the penalty is now often called for dubious or non-existent contact even in instances where it is questionable that the catch would be made. The second problem arises from the fact that the increased utilization of the foul is to increase scoring. Since scoring points improves ratings, officials are prone to call it even in cases of doubt.

My favorite instance of the stupidity of this rule came up at the end of a playoff game between the Giants and Forty Niners a few years ago. The Giants were lined up to kick a game winning field goal at the end of the game but the snap was botched. The holder ran around desperately with the ball as the clock expired and finally threw it downfield aimlessly. A player from each team, both big bulky linemen, jumped for the ball but neither caught it. There was considerable contact between the two prior to the arrival of the ball, but no flag was thrown. Niners win. The Giants bitched mildly afterwards that pass interference should have been called and that was that. Until the league formally apologized to the Giants the next day saying pass interference, indeed, should have been called since the Giants' lunk happened to have lined up as an end on the field goal team. I had two thoughts. the first, nothing new or remarkable, was how far the league will go to appease New York. The second was wow if they're going to start apologizing every time they fuck up a pass interference call they'll need to hire a bunch of people and rent some more office space.