Confirmed NFL TV watchers know the format. Team scores a touchdown, two-minute commercial block. Back for the kickoff. Then immediately back to more commercials. Finally, about seven or eight minutes later, real sustained action resumes again. Despite the repetition of format through the years (there are 10 commercial breaks per half), this convention of NFL TV never ceases to annoy and send viewers in search of the remote.
The only respite is the hope that the kickoff return by a Devin Hester or suchlike after the touchdown might be worth hanging around for. Which makes the NFL's decision to alter its kickoffs from the 30 to the 35 yard line for the kicking team all the more baffling. In the first weekend of preseason games using the format, almost a third of the kickoffs flew into or through the end zone for touchbacks (the most exciting play in football, cough). (This past weekend was not marginally better.) Last season averaged 16 per cent touchbacks.
Announcers estimated that teams would have conceded more touchbacks last weekend but brought the ball out to get practice on returns. So the number of unreturned kicks will likely rise come September's season openers. That means, as well, more teams starting drives on their own 20-yard line, a surefire depressant on offences that must go 80 yards to score a touchdown. Remember that defence wins championships but scoring begets cable subscribers.
The rule change has a sensible motive; the league is trying to reduce the number of injuries that occur on the dangerous high-speed kick returns. Fewer returns equal fewer injuries.
But the move is likely to send viewers away to other games or channels while advertisers peddle their wares. Network ads are the same on all NFL games so it will be the local commercials that are ignored by fans grazing the remote universe till action resumes. With the NFL already experiencing erosion to its RedZone Channel (which shows only live scoring highlights from all games that are under way) why give viewers another reason to stray from commercial buyers?
Pro sports are the last vestige of real-time appointment viewing. This seems to fly in the face of that convention.
BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU
It was great theatre, but was it a great career move? The Saskatchewan Roughriders' deposed head coach Greg Marshall chose the, er, sorta' low road in his farewell press conference. Scolding the team for giving up on him so soon, Marshall intimated that God himself could not make a silk purse from the 1-7 sow's ear that is the Riders. In a province that follows Team Green the way Ben Bernanke follows inflation it was the stuff of 48-point type.
For us media swine pining for another missive from Papa Rasmus (father of Blue Jays outfielder Colby), Marshall's presser was a jolt of caffeinated copy, a godsend on a slow news day. But was it smart of him to say, "The CFL has not seen the last of Greg Marshall"? Several scribes have pointed out (and Twitterdom, too) that maybe Marshall was ill-advised in gnawing in the hand that had, till Friday, fed him. In an eight-team league, there aren't that many bridges you can burn.
But as with Rasmus, isn't there something about the media having it both ways? Tut-tutting his candour even as we all endlessly recirculated the quotes? Just saying.
APPOINTMENT LISTENING
Why we love Greg Zaun and Jerry Howarth on the radio. Friday night in Oakland, the Toronto Blue Jays loaded the bases with none out in the first inning on an error and two walks. With Howarth setting details in his precise manner, Zaun cautioned listeners that, even though it was the first inning, it was a pivotal moment in the game. The Jays' batters, said Zaun, "had to keep the train moving," meaning they needed to look to advance runners deliberately rather than swinging for the fences.
Sure enough, Adam Lind, Edwin Encarnacion and Rasmus went up against Rich Harden looking for the fences. Ten pitches later they'd all struck out without advancing a runner or scoring a run. Even though it was early, Zaun suggested these at-bats were perhaps the key to the game, allowing the wily Harden to escape the first unscathed. Sure enough, the Jays didn't get another sniff, losing 2-0. Great radio.
PARDON THE INTERUPTION
Sometimes live TV is a challenge. During Saturday's Cubs-Cardinals game on FOX TV, the producers lined up St. Louis pitcher Chris Carpenter for a standard from-the-dugout interview. Safe enough, right? Carpenter begins droning on about the Cardinals' disappointing season. Suddenly Chicago's Aramis Ramirez jacks a two-run homer. The Wrigley faithful go mad. Pregnant pause.
Undaunted, announcers Marty Brenneman and Mark Grace move on with the interview with a joke about Ramirez doing that to many pitchers, right, Chris? Carpenter gets the cliché parade cranked up again. Bang, a triple for Chicago's Carlos Pena. More Wrigley pandemonium. More uncomfortable shuffling of feet in the FOX TV booth.
Let's try once more. Former Blue Jay Carpenter manfully takes on the topic of his Cards' struggles and, holy cow, Harry Caray, Chicago doubles home another run. Wrigley loses its mind. At which point, Fox producers decide that if this continues it'll be 8-0 Cubs with Carpenter hung out to dry. So he's excused early from the chat. "Thank you very much, guys," says a relieved Carpenter.