COLD-BLOODED
NFL all about the fans... who they make freeze at Dec. night games
S EVERAL years ago, the NFL Network produced and presented a propagandized profile of Roger Goodell. In it, Goodell was seen in Wisconsin, addressing a room of Packers fans.
In answering a question, he assured his audience that no matter the issue, the NFL will act in their best interests because, “It’s all about our fans.”
While there was little to no evidence of such decisionmaking then, there certainly is none now. In fact, Packers fans on Saturday will be able to experience Goodell’s altruism in the extreme.
At last look, the Green Bay forecast for early Saturday afternoon is a high of 21 degrees, but with partial sunshine. Acommon sense, common decency time to play the Vikings-Packers game would be noon local time, 1 p.m. here, or 1 p.m. there, 2 p.m. here, at the latest.
It’s no longer unusual, after all, for the NFL to “flex” starting times. But those are based on what best serves TV, more specifically, TV money, thus the more attractive games, even outdoors in winter, will move from 1 p.m. starts to 4:30 or 8:30.
Yet, with the Packers already eliminated, this one won’t meet the anticipated attraction.
Still, the “It’s all about our fans” Vikings-Packers game will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Green Bay, when weather has been forecast as 13 degrees, with a wind-chill factor — chill? — of 1 degree above zero.
Perhaps, at $40 million per, Goodell might have chosen to join team owners in kicking back some dough to NBC to start the game near noon.
As reader Marc Tendler urges, “Goodell should be forced to sit outside with the rest of the fans.” Yes, let him sit and await replay review decisions in arctic conditions. Afterward, in the parking lot, he could sell NFL- logo jumper cables.
Saturday, with the only other NFL game, the Colts at the Ravens, starting at 4:30 p.m., the NFL seized two outdoor Saturday games on Dec. 23 to make them night games.
But such customer-abusive decisions — don’t forget Goodell’s “good investments” PSLs — are symptomatic of a sports business that has lost its grip, sold its soul, and now operates under the delusion that fans will take what they’re given, like it, then beg for more.
Consider that NFL games — professional football at its highest, most expensive level — now are regularly determined by the insufferable and preventable: player misconduct and, as seen late in Sunday’s Patriots-Steelers game, the totally unintended application of replay rules.
Thus, Pittsburgh tight end Jesse James didn’t catch a pass then cross the goal line — an uncontested TD for decades — because he didn’t, as explained by the referee on the field microphone, “survive the ground.”
In 1998, former Giants general manager George Young, with the NFL office as a VP of operations, kept a swelling file on the “evolvement” of the replay rule, a file he marked, “The Monster Grows.”
Twenty years later, it’s devouring the game, weekly turning it incomprehensibly stupid as Emperor Goodell leads the Nero Fiddles League.
No greater authority on misdirected persecution than reader the Rev. Tom Mangieri reminds us not to blame the officials for what the games have become, but to “Blame the crazy rules they must enforce.” Amen.