Posted on 12/27/2017 9:05:43 AM PST by xzins
The embattled National Football League announced its decision to cancel this week’s edition of ‘Sunday Night Football’ on Tuesday; hoping to avoid a ratings bloodbath as a less-than-stellar line-up and New Year’s Eve festivities would have caused the NFL to reach embarrassing new lows.
The league opted to call-off the game before announcing which teams were scheduled to compete, adding the match-up wouldn’t have playoff implications and would likely cost the already troubled organization millions of dollars.
“We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. windows,” said a spokesperson for the NFL.
The National Football League is struggling to wrap up its disastrous 2017 season, with millions of fans tuning out or staying home following months of player protests.
Industry insiders predict the demonstrations have cost the NFL over $500 million.
President Trump thrust the issue into the national spotlight earlier this year, calling for a national boycott of the NFL until officials and owners clamp-down on their athletes “taking a knee” during the performance of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’
Haha. Perfect.
I had mostly given up on the NFL even before the “protests” began, because:
- Too much officiating.
- Endless, repetitive commercials.
- Stifling the defense, apparent desire to see more 63-52 final scores.
- Too much officiating.
- Too much coziness with the “fantasy games” industry.
- Time wasting replays, calls on the field being overturned when not obviously wrong.
- NFL “charities” and the ribbon-of-the week.
- Too much officiating.
- Cities and counties coughing up billions to support gaudy stadiums.
- Did I mention too much officiating?
“A short while ago, I turned on ESPN to check the schedule for the college bowl games today.”
There are bowl games today?
They regularly fill time slots with teams if they think they have a winner.
Dallas/Eagles would normally rate a Sunday evening match up.
“They should show “Heidi” in its place.”
I’m STILL pissed off about that!!!
I was manning a 1K radio station in upstate NY the day of the Heidi Bowl. I suddenly received dozens of phone calls wanting the result of the game, so I ran into the back room and ripped the feed off the AP news wire. I witnessed many an astonished reaction. At the time I was unaware of the untelevised drama. Quite a few unhappy gamblers in the bunch, I might add.
I am going to put this under the category of “Winning”.
JoMa
They should broadcast it on PBS, where ratings don’t really matter.
There have been times when they changed which teams would play on Sunday night, but I don’t recall them ever cancelling a game.
Last year or the year before they cancelled one or more regular games due to weather, IIRC.
I think i’ll Spend the first Sunday in February in my hot tub doing prep for my fantasy baseball drafts. Nothing else happening that day.
This is the note on the 2015 schedule BEFORE the boycott:
* – Sunday night games in Weeks 5-16 subject to change; Week 17 game TBD
titantv.com had it scheduled with teams to be announced.
This is the note on the 2015 season schedule. 2015 was before the boycott.
* – Sunday night games in Weeks 5-16 subject to change; Week 17 game TBD
So, if an interesting match up was on tap, then they showed it.
I’d suggest that the Dallas/Eagles game this week qualifies as what would normally be an interesting match up.
The league has disgraced itself, going back a number of seasons, but this year it has outdone itself with one public relations disaster after another. There needs to be a period of introspection and reform, but under Goodell I don't see that happening, even as they hemorrhage revenue and good will.
If the hard-core fans like myself are turning away in droves the league is headed for disaster, but rather than admit their mistakes Goodell and the owners blame the fans. The league needs to right the ship, but they seem unaware of how fast they're sinking, even as the numbers confirm the scope of the catastrophe.
Originally, when the schedule was set at the beginning of the year, those late season contests often turned out to be between non-competitive teams, or general ratings losers. The networks complained, and the NFL started what they called a Flex schedule, which meant they didn't decide which game to play that evening until that week. They tried to pick a good game for that Prime Time slot, but I guess they figured out that there are no ratings winners this year!
~~ smirk ~~
I thought attendance was only off “maybe 1%”??????????????????????????????????
This is the first year since I was 6 years old (I’m pushing 50) that my father and I didn’t watch NFL on Christmas night after dinner and other festivities were over. If we were in the same city, we’d watch together. If we weren’t, we’d call each other during the game to discuss. We both decided to watch an old Western instead. That’s our new tradition as of this year.
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