Some Modest Proposals

Finally….FINALLY…it took 13 weeks but someone has finally been eliminated from playoff contention. That’s right, the Cleveland Browns have been mathematically eliminated from the post season with their 37-3 home loss to the Bengals behind third-stringer-turned-default-starter Austin Hill, in the Battle of Ohio. At 2-10, the Browns are that little bit of truth hidden in all the jokes about how bad this season has been.

Though Week 13 was surprisingly entertaining, 2015 is still a straight up disaster in terms of the NFL’s famed “parity” with about six good teams running the table from wire to wire in most of the divisions. Sure, Seattle is still technically a threat to get hot and make a post season run after their slow start but the bulk of the ‘In The Hunt’ teams is just a list of the preseason pretenders (as they say) trying to hang on after being exposed (see: Falcons, Eagles). So, if I’m two-thirds of the league, I’m already looking ahead to 2016 and what my team is going to do after the #2 pick drafts the best player in the class ten minutes after Jimmy Haslam fucks up the #1 overall.

And though I know we all groan about the shitty on-field product, the question still lingers — already answered by America’s Too Big To Fail philosophy —  “Will the NFL ever not be #1?” Well, of course it will because there is nothing else on Sundays and, in general, TV is the worst. But with the general negative press of the NFL and seasons like 2015 where it’s unpredictable but still not effectively competitive, I’d like to offer a few changes for discussion at the next owners meeting:

Editor Note: This got really long so I’m gonna break this up into a multi-part post. Surely our handler at Bud Light Lime-erita: When Your Up For #Whateverita, will be pleased with the additional #clickbait potential.

1) Divisional Broadcast Crews: As an example, do you ever follow your favorite college basketball team through the season and realize, when you get to March Madness and the Tru TV broadcast team is calling the game, how much worse announcing is when the commentators clearly just saw your team’s roster list like 45 minutes before tip off? Well, that’s what it’s like watching a different crew every week trying to call NFL games.

A brief perusal of the [DFO] Live Blogs show an utter amount of disgust for pretty much every non-Tony Siragusa announcer, including rampant correction posts from fans who are more educated on the teams playing than the announcers. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the value of actual football experts, like Gruden or Madden, who can break down the game for me. But making me listen to Joe Buck or Greg Gumble because they are “great broadcast personalities”? Fuck off, they are not. And do you know why everyone hates Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels? Because they’re the epitome of watered-down, lowest common denominator, corporate-derived #content. Besides, these old fucking dogs can’t learn new tricks — even if it’s as simple as not calling a Microsoft Surface an iPad after Microsoft paid the NFL $400,000,000 to use Surface tablets.

Now, I get TNF/SNF/MNF are always gonna be partially about the broadcast crew. But I wish CBS/Fox wouldn’t ship around their day game crews based on whatever silly in-house metrics they have. I would much rather see broadcast crews limited to like two divisions; which really isn’t that ridiculous when you consider that CBS/Fox each carry only one conference’s home games.

The result, in theory, would be more knowledgeable broadcast crews who, instead of having to keep up with every team in the conference (which, as we’ve seen, basically equates to keeping up with no teams in the conference) would be more like college announcers who see the same teams over and over again and just brush up on upcoming visiting opponents as needed for their assignments.

I mean, I watched ARI at STL yesterday and, as a Cardinals fan, I am fairly knowledgeable about the Rams roster just based on cursory research of a weak division opponent, passive interest in their off-season moves (nonstop drafting of defensive talent and acquiring Nick Foles), and seeing them play twice a year. I don’t actually totally despise Chris Myers and Ronde Barber as on-air personalities in general, but they clearly were not familiar with the rosters of either team beyond the top level players. However, I will give Ronde props for saying, “And they should be” after Chris pointed out that the Rams crowd was audibly booing their team in the third quarter. Regardless, I am confident saying that these two were better prepared to discuss Fox’s hit new midseason lineup with Lucifer (“Lucifer, he’s no angel. Premieres Monday on Fox!”) and all new episodes of Grandfathered (“What happens when a cool bachelor finds out he has a grown child who just had a baby? Have mercy! Tune it to Grandfathered on Fox!”) than they were the offseason needs of the Rams or the differences between John Brown and Juron Brown.

Also, fun fact, John Brown’s nickname ‘Smokey’ has nothing to do with his speed. His mother gave him the nickname as a child because of how dark his skin is. This is not a point I’ve heard on any broadcast, all of which allude to it being related to his speed.

Knowledgeable broadcast teams, by the way, would not lean on the crutch of, “Bet a lot of fantasy owners will be looking for this guy!” after a big play by a non-star player on a team when any edition of an FF Q&A already told managers to pick up David Johnson when Chris Johnson and Andre Ellington went down five days earlier.

Considering an NFL game is a three hour broadcast with 75 minutes of commercials and 11 minutes of actual play, there’s over an hour and half of time that the broadcast team has to fill at every game. So when your canned sidebars are all used up halfway through the third quarter (Larry Fitzgerald resurgence, Jeff Fisher playcalling, Nick Foles trade, Bruce Arians sound bites), it becomes painfully obvious, and somewhat insulting to the fans, that the network is providing viewers with football experts that do not actually compliment the broadcast beyond the occasional slip of the tongue or passive-aggressive insult at their partner.

Granted, you run the risk of getting repetitive coverage from guy you hate but I think that’s a fair risk to take — and this is coming from a guy who has to listen to Bill Walton.