Has their Luck Run Out? - NFL 19-20

[Hot Pepsi]

I wonder if Mike Tomlin will move on soon. The Pittsburgh media doesn't seem to like him and maybe he'd rather just go somewhere else.

[Simon G]

Might as well shut him down. They're clearly not going far this year.

I actually started to watch the Steelers - Seahawks yesterday and then two plays in I realized I don't care and don't actually like football much. I know I've said that before, but it hadn't hit me as hard as it did then. I suppose I'll still care about PSU football because so many of my friends do and it's a social thing, but it really is kinda boring, isn't it? It's mostly commercials. How is it so popular?

Not having the Sky Sports package, I only get Sky Sports Mix which is a free channel that Sky use to promote some of the sports they show. Every Sunday night they show NFL Redzone which is commercial-less and basically shows every important event as it happens, or within moments of it happening. It's basically Sky Soccer Saturday, but showing the goals instead of just words flicking up on screen. I think in the US it's only available on the NFL Network.

It's without doubt the best way to watch NFL in my mind.

[ursus arctos]

The only way in our mind.

See also ESPN Goal Line for college football (though that isn't as comprehensive due to rights issues).

[Flynnie]

Red Zone is the only way to go if your team isn't playing. If the Niners are on, I'm watching the Niners.

Mind you, I think most sport is frankly pretty boring these days. I think part of it is my brain is fried now by the ol' smartphone - it's amazing to watch videos of fans at gigs or sporting events even 10 years ago and note how few people are waving a phone about - but I've reached this stage now where a lot of my sports engagement is historical versus current. Sure, the NFL always had WOOOOO excitement, and then 10 minutes in everybody's going for a pee break and more beer, but yeah... I've hit some 2019 sports ennui.

It doesn't help I find a lot of modern-day sport really unsatisfying from a tactical level.

I think I've watched one football (soccer) match for 90 minutes since the season started, yet I happily fired up Youtube and cuddled my feverish boy while we watched the first half of Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals (the game where the Celtics won by about 35). And I just bought a book about the Braves and Red Sox, and how the Red Sox usurped the Braves in fan support.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don’t have cable and just watch stuff on streaming services without commercials so my tolerance for ads is near zero. So i don’t have the patience to watching a sporting event with commercials unless I’m really invested in the outcome. And even then, it severely tests my patience and I’m going through a phase where I am trying to drop all things - physical things and ideas - that don’t really help me and “being very invested in a game I cannot influence” is one of those ideas.

And I don’t go to many events any more unless somebody else wants to go with me and most of my friends have small kids with short attention spans or they just aren’t interested. So the choice is to go to something alone or be at home with my dog watching something without commercials or reading.

[blameless]

but I've reached this stage now where a lot of my sports engagement is historical versus current

100% this. I can lose hours on YouTube watching footage of Niki Lauda or Barry Sanders or Diego Maradona, but my emotional investment in the current versions of their sports is draining away like a bath with the plug pulled.

[Kevin S]

I assume that like all good people we follow the account that tweets the Peanuts cartoon from this day 50 years ago. This week, they've gone football crazy.

https://twitter.com/Peanuts50YrsAgo/status/1173472225049141248?s=19

https://twitter.com/Peanuts50YrsAgo/status/1173833450488553472?s=19

https://twitter.com/Peanuts50YrsAgo/status/1174231546959712256?s=19

https://twitter.com/Peanuts50YrsAgo/status/1174585966843125760?s=19

https://twitter.com/Peanuts50YrsAgo/status/1175067959796129792?s=19

[ursus arctos]

The Patriots have released Antonio Brown

[Hot Pepsi]

Shocker

[jason voorhees]

F Jared GOOF
F Lame Ass Rams

Who DAT

WE GOT ROBBBBBBBBBBED..........ROBBED IN HEEEEEAAAAHHH

TTTEEEEEHHHH----DEEEEEEEE
TTTEEEEEHHHH-----DDEEEEEE

[jason voorhees]

(Ain't been DRANKIN Fortin Caña NOPE)

(Or listnin' to WWL and Bobby Hebert the Cajun Cañon, NOPE)

[Amor de Cosmos]

[CFL intermission]

The bailing boatman played what one analyst called "the worst half of professional football I've ever seen" last night. The sercond half wasn't much cop either. The Argos did something I've never seen before, they gave up turn-overs on their first two possessions. Not the first two series. The first two downs. The first was thrown, tipped and intercepted for a TD. The second fumbled and recovered by the Lions. It was painful to watch. BC won 55-8. Toronto's points came in the final thirty seconds by which time the Lions were playing schoolkids and walk-ups.

[ursus arctos]

Well, one against 12 isn't really a fair fight

[Amor de Cosmos]

Duh... yeah... I'll leave it, for (non)sense reasons

[Simon G]

In the least surprising news of the year, Jay Gruden has been sacked as Redskins head coach after an 0-5 start to the season and the team basically being devoid of any structure.

To be fair, Bruce Allen should be sent packing as well, but he seems to still be all in with Dan Snyder.

Bill Callaghan takes over on an interim basis.

[Hot Pepsi]

What a terrible organization led by a moron.

[Flynnie]

Snyder running the Redskins into the ground the way he did is the greatest piece of American performance art in the past 25 years. I mean, this is an actually rich guy who is a lifelong fan of the team and a DC native. He’s not Jeffrey Loria. But the innate scumbaggery that lurks within him cannot repress itself for the good of Old DC. No, he must continue to run the Skins into the fucking ground to satisfy his ego.

[ursus arctos]

We tend to think that Dolan is worse, but that reflects proximity bias. Snyder has outdone JD, which is a not inconsiderable feat.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm amazed at how many fans (or the press covering them) of either the Knicks or the Washington NFL team still care and pretend like it's going to work out somehow.

[ursus arctos]

There is a tremendous sense of entitlement in both fanbases, which I think tends to feed those attitudes and allow for the stenographic school of journalism to thrive. It can also be incredibly frustrating for supporters when your club's owner is completely toxic, but is also virtually immune from market forces that would otherwise encourage them to sell up.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Knicks still have MSG and Spike Lee and other cool fans. Plus, the Nets don’t seem to be doing much that might convince a lot of up and coming NY area fans to prefer them instead. If nothing else, they shouldn’t have trouble selling tickets.

And they have to be worth an ungodly fortune. Because of the international popularity of basketball, the future of the NBA is very bright. Some zillionaire will eventually be able to convince Dolan to take $5-$6bn and they’d probably be worth it.

Washington NFL play in a stadium nobody likes in a transient city where a big part of the population is from somewhere else and a huge part of the population that is not are black people who remember that George Preston Marshall was a nasty racist. They built their fanbase not just on the DC area, but the whole south. That area now has seven other teams. So Washington needs to ensure people in the Delmarva region are on their side.

But why would they be?

Just up the road are the Ravens, who don’t have a racist name, have a beautiful stadium by the harbor, are well-run, and have a core local fanbase that is almost pathologically loyal to their city. If I were a kid growing up in Delmarva today, I’d be a Ravens fan or maybe even an Eagles fan. I can’t see why anyone would gravitate to Dan Snyder’s team.

I don’t know why any billionaire would be willing to pay the premium that it would take to get Snyder to sell. Any NFL franchise is worth a lot, but think we’ve reached peak NFL and the long term prospects are not clear. Billionaires will still want to buy teams, but I’d think their value isn’t going to grow as fast as it used to and might slowdown considerably.


As for the journalists, the ones that work for outlets that are allowed to criticize the team probably don’t mind. Bad teams have more storylines and people are interested to understand why things are so bad, so that drives readership. The Patriots, by contrast, are pretty boring to read about.

The media that have contracts with the team don’t have that option. Of course, some of the talent on TV and the radio can think “this is a stepping stone to a better job.” Often it is. There are people on ESPN or the NFL network that I used to see on local tv in DC. But the pundits who work in Washington because they used to play for the team or are too old now to want to job-hop must feel that it’s all an empty exercise.

[ursus arctos]

The Nets are trying, and appear to be making inroads among younger people. The fact that Manhattan is becoming more and more unaffordable while Brooklyn maintains its cool reputation will help. But the Knicks' structural and historical advantages are massive.

Snyder has pretty much killed the one institution that effectively crossed all of the many social, cultural and economic divides in DC. It is an impressive piece of cultural vandalism.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Nets are trying, and appear to be making inroads among younger people. The fact that Manhattan is becoming more and more unaffordable while Brooklyn maintains its cool reputation will help. But the Knicks' structural and historical advantages are massive.

Snyder has pretty much killed the one institution that effectively crossed all of the many social, cultural and economic divides in DC. It is an impressive piece of cultural vandalism.

That’s really true! I could really feel that in the late 90s/early 2000s. And I could feel it had slipped away by time I left in 2010.

[San Bernardhinault]

There’s something peculiarly satisfying about a team I dislike - in both cricket and football - losing legitimate points/wickets because they used up their challenges earlier in a match.

[ursus arctos]

It's not nice to troll FF like that