Well, it’s January. It’s cold. The Christmas Joy has dissipated, and we are all settling in for a long winter. Last weekend, like most weekends in January, rather than bare the cold, I watched Football with my father. It is playoff time, and it is a great distraction from the fact that everything is freezing and will remain that way for the next couple months. As we were watching the 4thcommercial break in the last 10 minutes, my father turned to me and said, “they‘re losing me”. While I was not at that stage yet, I get what he is saying. It is hard to watch football, and not be inundated by the fact that the egos of the millionaires, and especially the billionaires involved, are milking their product for every possible dime. They feel they are too big to fail. The golden goose will never die. These egos leave us, the casual fans, feeling taken advantage of.
My father would not classify himself as a die-hard NFL fan, but he is a lover of all things sports, and as such he follows the NFL. He is not, and will never be the type to spend hours of his day reading up on the NFL. He will never have a fantasy football team. He won’t get pumped to spend his weekend watching the NFL draft. But during the football season, it is rare for a Sunday to go by without him watching at least a quarter or two of football. I think he is like many in this respect.
He feels like the games are too long. It is hard to stay in the moment when there is a commercial after a touchdown, than another commercial before the kickoff, and then yet another commercial break after the kickoff. He is a sports fan who is going to watch the NFL because it is the most entertaining sport in that timeslot. When you start to see the games as a three hour commercial break with some football in between, it gets to be a lot easier to disengage. It did not help that most of the games this weekend were dull, but when a man who has made the game a part of his Sunday’s for the past few decades starts to say ‘they’re losing me’. It’s not two or three bad games that the problem. There is a problem with the product.
I’ve thought about this quite a bit and I realized I am much less engaged than I used to be. I used to run a silly little pool through my family. I started it this year, but it kinda fizzled half way through the year. I haven’t asked for picks from anyone in about 2 months now. That would have been unheard of for me 2 or three year ago. Now, I’m OK with it. It’s not that I stopped watching football. I am just really OK with not being as avid a fan as I have in years past. I’m complacent. I watch football on Sundays because that’s what I’ve always done on Sundays, but that’s all.
And then the ‘independent’ report came out on the Ray Rice debacle. This whole scenario has me baffled, and the ‘independent’ report is no different. When you hear NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell talk about it, he sounds pretty satisfied about a report. Which is good for him, I guess. But this man, while facing raging criticism completely botching the discipline of a player who so obviously and publicly beat his wife unconscious, told reporters that he asked the police for the video evidence from the elevator where the beating occurred. This report, which was done ‘independently’, by the law firm that represented the NFL in the negotiation of a multi-billion dollar TV deal, says that neither Goodell, nor anyone else from the NFL offices asked for the tapes from either from the police or from Ray Rice’s attorney.
So to summarize, even the ‘independent’ investigator the NFL hand picked out of a law firm deep in NFL’s pockets could not spin this in a way that show the NFL did not royally screw the pooch. Goodell is of course putting his own spin on it saying in essence ‘I told you never saw the video’, but he seems really proud of himself for a man who is basically saying he put his head in the sand rather than actually ask for pertinent evidence in a very emotionally charged case. Explain how this man, who is clearly not capable of doing is job, still has his job.
What blows my mind in all this though is how we got here. I get Goodell using every form of spin imaginable to cover his ass. He knows he screwed up; it’s all damage control from here. I don’t get why he screwed up in the first place. Why did he cover for Ray Rice? As callous as it sounds, I would understand the motive if the NFL tried to cover for a superstar in the league. The kind of player the league bases its marketing campaigns around, who carries the league. If say Michael Jordan, in his prime did something this stupid, I would understand the NBA’s motive to sweep it under the rug. I would NOT agree with it, and would be calling for the head of whatever commissioner led that charge, but at least I would understand the motive. In this fictional scenario, the motive is greed. But here, Ray Rice was an aging running back, who might have a pro-bowl season left in him, but I doubt it. He was a star, and his name carried weight, especially in Baltimore. But this guy was just another big name, in a league full of big names. The league itself is no different with him in or out of a line-up. I don’t understand what motive the NFL has for thinking they could sweep this under the rug. The only answer I can come up with is that they didn’t care. They feel they are too big to fail.
This brings me back to watching football with my dad this weekend. This was before the ‘independent’ report was released, so Ray Rice was not really fresh in our minds. But still, my father, who has been a football fan for as long as I can remember, just isn’t that into it anymore. The broadcast is a blatant cash grab, and that is just getting less and less entertaining. Watching the health problems of the stars he grew up cheering for does not help either. Watching Goodell obviously lie through his teeth and hope we won’t notice, is, quite frankly, insulting. It is all part of a bigger picture, a bleak picture that has him wondering why he is wasting his time on these people, and their product.
The problem is the NFL does their spin, and they hope we believe it, but if we don’t, they don’t really care. They think that people will tune in on Sundays like they always have. Maybe they will (despite everything I have written here, I’ll probably be watching this weekend), but nothing is too big to fail. The Roman Empire wasn’t, neither was GM. If fans like my father are getting tired of the league. If it is becoming more work than its worth for him, and fans like him, then maybe the NFL should be taking notice. Maybe they should take a long look at their product, and how it’s being perceived, because if those casual fans leave, they are never coming back. And the NFL will be one step closer to killing the golden goose.
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