This is where I rant. About random stuff. You might've guessed that from the title.
The gift of modern technology has blessed football fans in many ways over the years, from the original TV broadcasts which brought the games into homes in a way radio never could, to instant replay, and right on down the line. The ridiculous creature comforts of today -– tiny, omnipresent on-screen scoreboard boxes, first down lines, even streaming fantasy stats -– make it easy to forget what is arguably the greatest leap of all time -- the advent of NFL Sunday Ticket in 1994.
Before that time, if you lived out of the area where your favorite team played (as I have since 1989), you had three choices if you wanted to see them play: 1) Pray they were lucky/good enough to be in either a nationally televised game or that they game happened to be shown in your area, 2) Go to a sports bar with a satellite dish to watch the game, or 3) Be disappointed.
I was actually lucky, because during the time I was in Boston at college and in Boulder after graduation, the Niners were such a good/popular team they were often on anyway. In fact, you knew going into each year they were good for three Monday night games, two Sunday night games, and plenty of late afternoon national games. It helped they played the late games, where’s there less competition, and also that NBC/CBS (whichever was covering the AFC) always used a NIner game -– of which they had two per year -– to jack up ratings by making it a national game. In short, I was spoiled.
Most other fans who lived out of town had to suffer the indignity of calling 1-800 numbers or staring at the Headline Sports ticker for score updates. So when it arrived, Sunday Ticket might as well have been the Holy Grail to football fans. Suddenly, it didn’t matter what game the stupid network chose to put on in your area. It didn’t matter if they played some crappy local matchup over a classic game going on at the same time (I dealt with this a lot growing up -– the Raiders were always on 1pm PDT even if their game sucked while Elway and Fouts were in a shootout at Mile High). Hell, it didn’t even matter if there several great games on at once -– you could watch them all.
But that’s the thing -– you can’t. There’s only so much you can swallow at once. Of course, we didn’t know that in those giddy early days. Like teens discovering the joys of a box of wine, we didn’t just get tipsy on our new delight, we gulped it down until our heads were splitting. Soon, it became clear there were limits (aren’t there always?) -- you have to know when to say when, or risk ruining a good thing. Thus, The Theory was born.
The core belief of The Theory is this: Two football games is the most you can watch and still have a clear idea what is going on in both at all times. The jump button is a big part of this (and the two-tuner receivers have added to that*), but the same is true at a sports bar – watching three games at once is the point when things become disjointed. You start to lose key bits of narrative – an injury update, a measurement, a key play here or there. But that’s not to say you can’t follow more than two games played at the same time. It takes a thoughtful, methodical approach, but I’m just the kind of lazy, underachieving loser who takes non-valuable time out my schedule to come up with approaches to these types of things.
See, while you can only truly follow two games at any one moment, games last much longer than a moment. They last over three hours, and each has its own unique rhythm and pace. Teams get out to big leads, allowing you to drop them from the rotation -– if the score tightens up later, they may re-join it. Some games move along more rapidly than others –- particularly quick games go to halftime early and may be dropped from the rotation temporarily, particularly slow games can be saved until later because the opportunity will still be available.
This brings up one of the key tenets of The Theory: Games which are closer to ending should be given rotation priority over games with more time left. Often this can be the overriding factor –- If three games are tied in 4th quarter, watch two with the least time left. This can change with the score, however. If one of those three hypothetical games was a one-point game (and therefore less like to go to OT), it should be given slight preference over a tie-game with about the same amount of time left.
The Theory is really like a constantly shifting organism –- Game A and B are in the rotation until Game B turns into a blowout and it is replaced with Game C. Soon after, the pace of Game A begins to slow down and it is replaced by Game D, which is speeding to a conclusion. By the time it’s done, Game A is a blowout, but Game B is tightening up, so that jumps in. And so on, and so on. It actually sounds like a lot of work written out like that. And maybe it is. But it’s a labor love.
New Stars:
While we're talking about football on TV, here are a couple of thoughts I've had this week on that subject:
--Sometime 'Inside the NFL' correspondent Jenn Brown -- on the show this week with a piece on the game in London last week -- is suddenly in the argument for "Who's the world's hottest female sportscaster. While I think she's certainly the kind of change we can believe in, this election season I'm still casting my vote for Erin Andrews. It comes down to the big issues: experience, and bigger tits.
--Speaking of sportscasters whose previous TV experience came outside of the sports world, there's a bright new star on the football color commentating landscape: Jesse Palmer, late of 'The Bachelor' and a former 3rd string QB in the NFL (including a brief stint with the Niners). Late last season, he did a few NFL games for FOX and displayed a lot of skill. This year, he's at ESPN, covering college football as both a studio analyst and color commentator on the Thursday night games with Chris Fowler. He's smart, funny, and makes his points without droning on or repeating himself unnecessarily.
----Osi Umenyura did a guest spot on 'Inside the NFL' this week, and while I know he has a whole lot of good football left in him, he already appears a better fit in the studio than former teammate and current NBC studio analyst Tiki Barber, who retired early just so he could announce. Umenyura was brutally honest, handled tough question deftly, showed uncommon insight, and a million dollar smile. You haven't seen the last of him on TV -- although you may have to wait 10+ years until you see him.
* Now you can switch away from a game and know that even if you “miss” something big while watching the other game, you’re still recording on the other tuner and can rewind the see what you’ve missed.
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