Off On A Football Tangent Today …

There was a play in the Eagles/Bears game yesterday that demonstrates a hole in the new NFL rule on “what is a catch”.  If you recall, the Bears completed a pass; the receiver had the ball and took several steps before he was stripped of the ball before he was down.  The ball sat on the field; no one recovered it – – AND – – the back judge came running up to the place where the receiver was on the ground signaling an incomplete pass.  I could not hear it, but presumably he was also blowing his whistle to signal the end of the play and the need to stop the clock on the pass he had just ruled was incomplete.

No one made a clear recovery of that ball lying there on the field around the 10-yardline.  Of course not; everyone in the vicinity saw the official signal an incomplete pass; there is no reason to try to “recover” an incomplete pass.  The problem with the rule as written or as interpreted is this:

• Since the replay showed a legal catch followed by a fumble – and not an incomplete pass as called – and since there was no “clear recovery” of the fumble demonstrated by the replay, there was no way to allow the reality of the fumble to determined what to do with the next play.  Therefore, the call on the field – despite being clearly demonstrated as incorrect – had to stand.

The NFL Competition Committee must have this as Item #1 on its agenda for its meeting later this year…

Last week, I pointed out that reports about the demise of NFL popularity may be a tad premature.  Ratings are up, and NFL football dominated the sports viewing calendar for 2018.  If you watch games on the weekends, you know the feeling of being bombarded by ads at every stoppage of play and you also must have determined that there is a rhythm and flow to which ad goes in which slot in the games.  Here is a tally of the most frequent advertisers on 2018 NFL games; the ones listed as the Top 5 in terms of frequency should be no surprise; the order may surprise you but not the advertisers:

• Number 1:  Geico
• Number 2:  Verizon
• Number 3:  Pizza Hut
• Number 4:  Burger King
• Number 5:  Bud Light  [Dilly!  Dilly!]

Actually, I was surprised by one thing about this “Top 5”.  I would have thought that there were more ads for Progressive Insurance than there were for Pizza Hut – – but the data say I would have been incorrect in that assumption.  In addition, total ad revenue generated by all the ads on NFL regular season games was up a little over 3% for 2018 as compared to the 2017 regular season.

Last week, adweek.com reported that Super Bowl advertising slots are bringing in something “north of $5 million” for a 30-second spot during the game.  If that price holds true, CBS will join NBC from last year’s telecast going over $500M for total advertising revenue for the day.  The game itself should draw about $350M for 30-second slots and the other $150M or so will come from pre-game and post-game slots.

The Raiders – I don’t know if it is proper to identify them as the Oakland Raiders any more since they may play their home games in Fargo, ND next year for all we know – hired Mike Mayock to be their GM about a week ago.  Mayock has been a TV analyst and “draft guru” for several networks over the past decade or so.  He replaces Reggie McKenzie who had been the Raiders’ GM for almost 6 years until he was fired in early December of last year.  Recognizing that the NFL – like many other professional sporting leagues – is a copycat league”, here is something to ponder:

• If Mayock is highly successful in building a competitive roster for the Raiders, which team will be the one to jump in and make a pre-emptive offer to Mel Kiper, Jr. to be its GM?

The week after the NFL concludes its season with Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, there will still be professional football to watch – – if your cable package includes CBS Sports Network.  The Alliance of American Football will commence then.  Next year, there will presumably be two pro leagues cooking in the springtime assuming that the AAF survives and that XFL 2.0 comes into existence.  And – believe it or not – there is a third new football enterprise that could become a reality.

About a month ago, Ricky Williams announced something called the Freedom Football League.  Williams said that he was joined by Terrell Owens, Simeon Rice and 50 former players as stakeholders in this enterprise.  Here is part of William’s announcement:

“It’s a new spring football league, and it’s for the fans and it’s by the players. It all started with a bunch of guys sitting around a table, talking about the good old days and realizing ‘you know? We have a lot of experience. We’ve been there before, we know how to do it, what if we started a league and really made it about developing young men?'”

The FFL will start with 10 teams and will get its players from “…those defecting from the NFL, graduating college or high school or playing in international or alternative professional football leagues.”  Based on an interview with ESPN’s Outside the Lines, Williams indicates that the FFL will have social objectives as well as athletic and economic objectives:

“When I grew up watching football, I really wanted to be like Jim Brown, not because of what he did on a field, but because he could take that platform and have a voice. And so, when I got to the NFL expecting that to be the case, anytime a big social issue came up we were told: ‘Be quiet … It’s a distraction.’ And so really [we’re] changing the conversation.”

Based on what I know now, I have no way to anticipate what the league will look like or where it will be located.  Obviously, that means I have no way to assess its potential viability.  If it really “about developing young men”, I wish it great success; if this is merely a football version of the “AND 1 basketball exhibition tour”, then I hope it dries up and blows away.

Finally, here is an observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“A 46-year old Irish woman who claims she’s married to a 300-year old pirate called Jack now says she wants to divorce him.

“As for Jack, he reportedly ran off with Mantei T’eo’s girlfriend.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………