Parity gives way to futility
NFL these days features 7-0 teams, lots of mediocrity
Pete Rozelle bequeathed many gifts to the NFL, not the least of which was the brilliance of parity. If every team had a chance to make the playoffs well into the season, if almost everyone finished 8-8 or 9-7 or 10-6, hope and optimism would permeate the league. Dominance and perfection fascinate the media, but for widespread growth, there was nothing quite like the notion of every fan thinking his or her team had a chance, not just in September, but in December as well.
So what would Rozelle, who died nearly 19 years ago, have thought of the 2015 NFL season? Four 7-0 teams, three of them from the AFC, are surrounded by a gaggle of mediocrity and futility. Nearly halfway through the season, nine NFL teams — more than a quarter of the league — have managed to win just two games or less. Snippets of parity emerge here and there, in the AFC South and NFC East particularly. Then again, perhaps that is incompetence masquerading as equality.
Try as it might to create a level playing field in our most popular national sport, the NFL simply cannot correct for incompetence and dysfunction. It cannot make up for bad coaching (Tennessee), bad ownership (Washington) or bad management (Cleveland).
That brings us to Johnny Manziel. He’s back, fresh from his appearance on a police dash-cam video, starting for the 2-6 Browns on the road against the undefeated Cincinnati Bengals.
Rozelle was famous for reciting the parity rallying cry credited to a predecessor, Bert Bell: “On any given Sunday …”
What do we say when the game is on a Thursday?
Manziel is being given a rare start because Josh McCown, the Browns’ No. 1 quarterback, is out with a rib injury. The last time Manziel faced the Bengals, in Week 15 last season, his rookie year, he was intercepted twice, sacked three times and managed just 80 yards passing. The Browns lost 30-0.
But Manziel must be happy to be eligible to play. He is still under investigation by the NFL for an Oct. 12 incident in which Manziel’s girlfriend told police he hit her a couple of times and pushed her head against a car window during an argument in the Cleveland suburb of Avon, Ohio.
Manziel, who spent 10 weeks in a rehabilitation facility this past winter and spring, told police he had two drinks before getting into his car. Witnesses observed him traveling about 90 mph, driving on the shoulder and cutting through traffic before the alleged violence occurred.
Nonetheless, no charges were filed, the police let him drive away and now he’s a starting quarterback in a nationally televised NFL game. Lovely, isn’t it?
It’s hard to imagine how any of this behavior would be allowed under the NFL’s strict new personal-conduct policy, although it’s even harder to imagine Man- ziel being put on paid leave when the Browns need him most.
The NFL reiterated Wednesday that its investigation of Manziel, already more than two weeks old, is ongoing. No one can complain that the league is rushing to judgment on this one.
If any of this extracurricular misbehavior makes people mad, there’s no long-term evidence of it. Whether it be Manziel, Ray Rice, Greg Hardy or Adrian Peterson, after an initial flurry of headlines and outrage, we all just move along. No one stops watching or caring — and that goes for bad play on the field as well.
Major League Baseball was thrilled with its high TV ratings for the just-completed World Series, and rightly so. But when its most important game of the year, World Series Game 5, went headto-head with a fascinating but decidedly midseason NFL battle between undefeated Green Bay and Denver, the football game easily outdrew it, attracting nearly 6 million more viewers.
Rozelle could have declared victory long ago from that big commissioner’s office in the sky. Who needs parity when you have become such a mainstay of American culture? Dominance, ineptitude, blowouts, close calls: almost anything goes within the NFL juggernaut.
As they might say, on any given Thursday …