Falcons bring in the noise during funk
Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank said Tuesday that the team may have pumped artificial crowd noise into the Georgia Dome for home games the past two years.
Blank had a quick response when asked if there was a fine line for crowd noise not allowed by the league.
“It’s not really a fine line,” Blank told The Associated Press. “I think what we’ve done in 2013 and 2014 was wrong. Anything that affects the competitive balance and fairness on the field, we’re opposed to as a league, as a club and as an owner. It’s obviously embarrassing, but beyond embarrassing it doesn’t represent our culture and what we’re about.”
Blank said he expects the NFL to finish its investigation in two to three weeks.
The Falcons could be fined or penalized with the loss of a draft pick if found to have added fake crowd noise during the opposing team’s huddles when they were trying to call a play.
“We’ve got some information internally,” Blank said of the investigation. “Not all, clearly, until we see the full report. But we’ve dealt with it internally the best we can, which was limited because we haven’t seen the report.
“We’ve gotten some information from the league but until we read the full report and until they publish their findings, we can’t be totally clear. We’ve talked to a lot of people and we’ve cooperated, and we’ll be anxious to read the report.”
The Falcons said 101 of 103 games have been sellouts since Blank bought the team in 2002. Actual turnouts declined during losing seasons the past two years.
Atlanta ranked 10th among the 32 NFL teams with its average home attendance of 72,130 in 2014. Construction is underway for a new $1.4 billion stadium that will replace the Georgia Dome in 2017. The new stadium will have a similar seating capacity.
More onions, please
Bill Raftery and Grant Hill are taking the place of the suspended Greg Anthony for the broadcasts of the NCAA Tournament’s semifinals and national championship game in April.
Raftery and Hill will work as analysts alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, CBS and Turner Sports said Tuesday. Anthony was suspended Jan. 17 for the rest of the season after he was arrested in Washington on charges he solicited a prostitute.
Raftery has been telling fans defenses are in “man-to-man” or that a player’s clutch shot took “onions” for more than three decades during the NCAA Tournament, but this is his first Final Four for TV after 23 years of handling the radio call.
Raftery, 71, said he hadn’t thought much over the years about the chance to call a Final Four on television. But now that he’s been afforded the opportunity, he described it as “quite a thrill.”
Raftery also looks forward to getting more in-depth with his analysis on TV.
“On radio, you’re a bump in the road for the play-by-play guy,” he said.
Hill, 42, didn’t start doing NBA games until this season and will make his college basketball debut for Saturday’s Duke-Notre Dame game on CBS that will bring him back to Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The NCAA Tournament’s semifinals will be played April 4 in Indianapolis, with the game televised by TBS. The national championship game is April 6 and will be shown on CBS.