If You Ask Me, Vol. 1: NFL Edition
Posted on
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This article marks the start of what I hope to be a regular feature here on the Game of Angst, called If You Ask Me. Its title comes from something my mother always used to say about just about anything. "If you ask me," she'd begin, before going off on some diatribe about how whoever was doing whatever wrong. Whether it was the placement of a pond in someone's front yard, the arrangement of colors on some stranger's house or the way I lived my life, my mother has always had an opinion and no reluctance to share said opinion whether others want to hear it or not. I have inherited this genetic defect, this inability to just keep my yap shut about things that I have precious little to do with. As such, a blog is the perfect spot from which to unload my almost informed opinions about anything. With that in mind, I bring you the first ever installment of If You Ask Me®, the NFL edition.
I'm an American football fan with a Tivo. For the last two seasons, I've Tivoed at least 2 NFL games each Sunday if not 3 or 4 as well as the Monday Night games, any good Saturday or Thursday games, and every game of the playoffs. As such, I'm fairly well-versed with the game as it is presented on television and have strong opinions about the game. If you ask me, the game is great, but needs some changes to take it to another level.
If You Ask Me #1: Penalties on Kickoffs and Punts
The kicking game of any team, as important as it is, is one boring piece of work. Out of every game I watch over the course of a season, I'd say maybe 5 or 6 kickoffs and punts combined are worth watching. The rest are fast-forward fodder. I don't want to see them, because they are boring as dirt. They net few extra yards, and outside of a muffed catch or a spectacular hit, nothing interesting happens. They tend to interrupt the flow of the game a great deal but I can accept that.
But what really kills the flow of the game is when one of these somnambulistic ballets gets called back on a penalty. And the penalty most often used to interrupt and irritate me is the illegal block in the back penalty. When I played football in junior high, the only penalty ever called on a punt return or kickoff was holding or clipping. Clipping was a man's penalty. Clipping was the act of blocking someone below the belt when their back was turned and by God it was a serious penalty, netting 15 yards. It needed to be serious, because that kind of block could end someone's career.
The illegal block in the back, however, is a penalty for pansies. It's a 10-yard penalty for merely touching a player in the back, above or below the waist. Now, I'm sure it's meant to be for actually blocking a player hard in the back where the blocked player is supposed to be defenseless and unable to brace for the impact. But I have literally seen the penalty be given for putting your hands on a guy's jersey when their back is to you. And unlike clipping, it isn't given at most once a game, it's given on almost every single goddamn punt in the game. It's given so much the refs should just tack on an extra 10-yards to every single goddamn punt on general principle.
If you ask me, that rule needs to get tossed on its ear, or it needs to be called only when the block could be considered dangerous. These are guys wearing modern, cutting-edge armor, they can take a swipe at the back of their jersey.
If You Ask Me #2: Commercial Timeouts
Now, I realize the networks who broadcast the NFL games want to get paid. It's an expensive proposition to take a traveling road show of camera man, producers, broadcasters and stats guys to 32 different cities each week. John Madden's trailer alone must cost them millions in refrigerator restocks. I want the networks to make their investment back and a little profit besides, because they entertain me for months.
But can we all agree that there are too many commercials breaking up the flow of the game? Do we really need to enter a commercial break both before a kickoff AND after? Did I not just see that annoying fucker say "Can you hear me now?" 30 seconds ago, you have to show him to me again? The Geico cavemen are not THAT funny. I understand it takes a little time to move the offense onto the field after a change in possession, but not two minutes of commercial time. If you ask me, there needs to be one commercial break after changes in possession and that's it.
And what's more, we really do not need The VISA HALFTIME SHOW. It's just the goddamn halftime show. I don't care who paid for it. If the NFL must make that much money on commercial endorsements, just do it like the English football clubs do. Make the uniforms one big fucking billboard for the team's sponsor, plaster a metric fuckton of corporate logos all over every empty surface in the stadiums and get on with your lives. The Green Bay Packers brought to you with a gigantic Johnsonville Brats logo on their chests bothers me much less than the Michelin Scoreboard.
If You Ask Me #3: Halftime Shows for Speed Freaks
As a kid watching football, I loved the halftime studio shows. They were informative, updating all the scores around the league, dousing me with highlights and maybe the studio talking heads would wax poetic about some of the action for thirty seconds before sending the feed back out to the games. Somewhere, that all changed. Somehow, the halftime show became a blipvert for speed freaks, the barely-slowed down dolphin speech of functional illiterates trying to cram as much actual information into the space of thirty seconds, before assaulting me with 8 minutes of commercials. Didn't I just talk about too many commercials in the above paragraphs? It's back.
I want highlights, people, not seizure-inducing images flashed in a meth-fueled slideshow with a voiceover by hyped-up gorilla unable to keep up with the feed. Whether it's Terry Bradshaw or Shannon Sharpe, these guys' mouths are not physically able to keep up with all the action being shown and yet they try to stumble through. Hearing Bradshaw choke on T.J. Houshmandzadeh's name before the video switches to the next game is painful. It's just impossible to mouth the syllables before two other games have flashed by. What's worse is how hard it makes to follow the other games while watching, almost forcing one to the Internet for real information. Yet somehow, the studios have enough time for commercials, as well as 2 or 3 minutes of the studio talking heads to smack-talk each other in some dick-waving contest that offers no real insight into the strategies the teams are using.
If you ask me, the networks should either just play highlights and scores with no voiceovers, or just play commercials and let me fast-forward them. I've better things to do with my time, like artificially inseminating beavers.
If You Ask Me #4: Graphics for the Blind
Every network clothes their broadcasts in different graphic treatments, showing off the scoreboard, clock, down indicator and some stats with varying degrees of usefulness. But somewhere along the way, those graphics got way out of hand. Not only do some of the networks use graphics with horribly ugly, unreadable fonts (Fox), most of them take up so much screen real estate they turn a 27" inch TV into a 14" squintbox. And what do they do with all that screen real estate besides piss me off?
Nothing. FoxSports, the NFL Network and NBC's Monday Night Football broadcasts all use horizontal bars at the top or bottom of the screen, covering the entire width of the display. Even when parts of the display have no information whatsoever, they still sit there, obscuring my view of the field. And these areas are empty a good deal of the time. ESPN's display is better, but still entirely too large for what it displays. Of all the networks, only CBS does an admirable job with their graphics. The fonts are crisp, clean and readable even on non-HD displays, the scoreboard is minimal with no honking big team logos taking up unneeded space. Between plays, they flash fantasy stats on the player who was just involved in the last play. Their ticker for other games in progress does take up the entire width of the bottom of the screen, but is tinier than the bars on Fox, NFL or NBC.
If you ask me, the graphics teams for these networks need to be sent back to school. All they do is piss me off.
If You Ask Me #5: Celebrities, Personalities and the Jackass Factor
I'm looking at you, ESPN's Monday Night Football. Is there really any good goddamn reason Sly Stallone was sitting in the booth hawking his new movie during an Eagles game? Did I really need to hear him being interviewed by Theismann and Kornhole? This is a fucking football game, not a trip through the stands at a Lakers game by Pat Fucking O'Brien. I tuned in to see a good football game and you give me Entertainment Tonight as hosted by Brickhead and the Twat. Stop it.
As for the broadcasters, Mike Tirico does a game job of the booth duties on the game, but if it were me, I'd be ready to go postal on the rest of the booth by the mid-point of the season. Joe Theismann was a good quarterback, but he's abrasive as an announcer and always has been. But at least he knows football. Tony Kornheiser, on the other hand, cannot possibly have as much football knowledge. If Theismann is abrasive, Kornhole is steel wool on genitals irritating. He comes off as arrogant and combative. There are times when I expect Theismann to stand up, pull off his dangling broken leg off of his body and beat Kornhole to death with it. I know I'd watch that. Theismann has always had a somewhat contentious tone with other members of the booth team, but he and Kornheiser seem to clash like Thunder and Lightning. It makes me want to watch the game on mute.
If you ask me, the ESPN crew needs to focus less on the showbiz and more on the football. I'm sure the ratings were good for them this year, but the show needs help to be a must-watch again. As it is, I can stomach Madden-Michaels more and Madden has really started to irritate me over the years. Bring back Pat Summerall, bitches!
Life would be a whole lot brighter if these people would just ask me.
I'm an American football fan with a Tivo. For the last two seasons, I've Tivoed at least 2 NFL games each Sunday if not 3 or 4 as well as the Monday Night games, any good Saturday or Thursday games, and every game of the playoffs. As such, I'm fairly well-versed with the game as it is presented on television and have strong opinions about the game. If you ask me, the game is great, but needs some changes to take it to another level.
If You Ask Me #1: Penalties on Kickoffs and Punts
The kicking game of any team, as important as it is, is one boring piece of work. Out of every game I watch over the course of a season, I'd say maybe 5 or 6 kickoffs and punts combined are worth watching. The rest are fast-forward fodder. I don't want to see them, because they are boring as dirt. They net few extra yards, and outside of a muffed catch or a spectacular hit, nothing interesting happens. They tend to interrupt the flow of the game a great deal but I can accept that.
But what really kills the flow of the game is when one of these somnambulistic ballets gets called back on a penalty. And the penalty most often used to interrupt and irritate me is the illegal block in the back penalty. When I played football in junior high, the only penalty ever called on a punt return or kickoff was holding or clipping. Clipping was a man's penalty. Clipping was the act of blocking someone below the belt when their back was turned and by God it was a serious penalty, netting 15 yards. It needed to be serious, because that kind of block could end someone's career.
The illegal block in the back, however, is a penalty for pansies. It's a 10-yard penalty for merely touching a player in the back, above or below the waist. Now, I'm sure it's meant to be for actually blocking a player hard in the back where the blocked player is supposed to be defenseless and unable to brace for the impact. But I have literally seen the penalty be given for putting your hands on a guy's jersey when their back is to you. And unlike clipping, it isn't given at most once a game, it's given on almost every single goddamn punt in the game. It's given so much the refs should just tack on an extra 10-yards to every single goddamn punt on general principle.
If you ask me, that rule needs to get tossed on its ear, or it needs to be called only when the block could be considered dangerous. These are guys wearing modern, cutting-edge armor, they can take a swipe at the back of their jersey.
If You Ask Me #2: Commercial Timeouts
Now, I realize the networks who broadcast the NFL games want to get paid. It's an expensive proposition to take a traveling road show of camera man, producers, broadcasters and stats guys to 32 different cities each week. John Madden's trailer alone must cost them millions in refrigerator restocks. I want the networks to make their investment back and a little profit besides, because they entertain me for months.
But can we all agree that there are too many commercials breaking up the flow of the game? Do we really need to enter a commercial break both before a kickoff AND after? Did I not just see that annoying fucker say "Can you hear me now?" 30 seconds ago, you have to show him to me again? The Geico cavemen are not THAT funny. I understand it takes a little time to move the offense onto the field after a change in possession, but not two minutes of commercial time. If you ask me, there needs to be one commercial break after changes in possession and that's it.
And what's more, we really do not need The VISA HALFTIME SHOW. It's just the goddamn halftime show. I don't care who paid for it. If the NFL must make that much money on commercial endorsements, just do it like the English football clubs do. Make the uniforms one big fucking billboard for the team's sponsor, plaster a metric fuckton of corporate logos all over every empty surface in the stadiums and get on with your lives. The Green Bay Packers brought to you with a gigantic Johnsonville Brats logo on their chests bothers me much less than the Michelin Scoreboard.
If You Ask Me #3: Halftime Shows for Speed Freaks
As a kid watching football, I loved the halftime studio shows. They were informative, updating all the scores around the league, dousing me with highlights and maybe the studio talking heads would wax poetic about some of the action for thirty seconds before sending the feed back out to the games. Somewhere, that all changed. Somehow, the halftime show became a blipvert for speed freaks, the barely-slowed down dolphin speech of functional illiterates trying to cram as much actual information into the space of thirty seconds, before assaulting me with 8 minutes of commercials. Didn't I just talk about too many commercials in the above paragraphs? It's back.
I want highlights, people, not seizure-inducing images flashed in a meth-fueled slideshow with a voiceover by hyped-up gorilla unable to keep up with the feed. Whether it's Terry Bradshaw or Shannon Sharpe, these guys' mouths are not physically able to keep up with all the action being shown and yet they try to stumble through. Hearing Bradshaw choke on T.J. Houshmandzadeh's name before the video switches to the next game is painful. It's just impossible to mouth the syllables before two other games have flashed by. What's worse is how hard it makes to follow the other games while watching, almost forcing one to the Internet for real information. Yet somehow, the studios have enough time for commercials, as well as 2 or 3 minutes of the studio talking heads to smack-talk each other in some dick-waving contest that offers no real insight into the strategies the teams are using.
If you ask me, the networks should either just play highlights and scores with no voiceovers, or just play commercials and let me fast-forward them. I've better things to do with my time, like artificially inseminating beavers.
If You Ask Me #4: Graphics for the Blind
Every network clothes their broadcasts in different graphic treatments, showing off the scoreboard, clock, down indicator and some stats with varying degrees of usefulness. But somewhere along the way, those graphics got way out of hand. Not only do some of the networks use graphics with horribly ugly, unreadable fonts (Fox), most of them take up so much screen real estate they turn a 27" inch TV into a 14" squintbox. And what do they do with all that screen real estate besides piss me off?
Nothing. FoxSports, the NFL Network and NBC's Monday Night Football broadcasts all use horizontal bars at the top or bottom of the screen, covering the entire width of the display. Even when parts of the display have no information whatsoever, they still sit there, obscuring my view of the field. And these areas are empty a good deal of the time. ESPN's display is better, but still entirely too large for what it displays. Of all the networks, only CBS does an admirable job with their graphics. The fonts are crisp, clean and readable even on non-HD displays, the scoreboard is minimal with no honking big team logos taking up unneeded space. Between plays, they flash fantasy stats on the player who was just involved in the last play. Their ticker for other games in progress does take up the entire width of the bottom of the screen, but is tinier than the bars on Fox, NFL or NBC.
If you ask me, the graphics teams for these networks need to be sent back to school. All they do is piss me off.
If You Ask Me #5: Celebrities, Personalities and the Jackass Factor
I'm looking at you, ESPN's Monday Night Football. Is there really any good goddamn reason Sly Stallone was sitting in the booth hawking his new movie during an Eagles game? Did I really need to hear him being interviewed by Theismann and Kornhole? This is a fucking football game, not a trip through the stands at a Lakers game by Pat Fucking O'Brien. I tuned in to see a good football game and you give me Entertainment Tonight as hosted by Brickhead and the Twat. Stop it.
As for the broadcasters, Mike Tirico does a game job of the booth duties on the game, but if it were me, I'd be ready to go postal on the rest of the booth by the mid-point of the season. Joe Theismann was a good quarterback, but he's abrasive as an announcer and always has been. But at least he knows football. Tony Kornheiser, on the other hand, cannot possibly have as much football knowledge. If Theismann is abrasive, Kornhole is steel wool on genitals irritating. He comes off as arrogant and combative. There are times when I expect Theismann to stand up, pull off his dangling broken leg off of his body and beat Kornhole to death with it. I know I'd watch that. Theismann has always had a somewhat contentious tone with other members of the booth team, but he and Kornheiser seem to clash like Thunder and Lightning. It makes me want to watch the game on mute.
If you ask me, the ESPN crew needs to focus less on the showbiz and more on the football. I'm sure the ratings were good for them this year, but the show needs help to be a must-watch again. As it is, I can stomach Madden-Michaels more and Madden has really started to irritate me over the years. Bring back Pat Summerall, bitches!
Life would be a whole lot brighter if these people would just ask me.
Labels: Football, If You Ask Me, NFL, Sports
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:42 AM
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