The NFL doesn’t have enough stars–at least stars left standing. This season the quarterback casualties have included Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Randall Cunningham, Troy Aikman. Steve Young. Jim Kelly, Jim McMahon. Vinny Testaverde and Drew Bledsoe, and a benchful of backups. Each year the league changes its rules to protect these glamour boys, yet each year more seem to get hurt. By next year they’ll adopt touch-football rules and have the defense count 1-2-3 Mississippi.
They’re too good and too dull at the same time. When was the last time a defense had a great nickname like the Doomsday Defense or the Purple PeopleEaters? Even the old No-Name Defense sounds exciting compared with today’s noname defenses. Al] come from the same computer: they “bend but don’t break,” making the short, dump-off pass the staple of every offense and kickers the most-feared scoring weapon. If you expect touchdowns, you’re watching the wrong game.
Years ago former NFL star and “Monday Night” announcer Alex Karras decried the injustice of a bunch of foreign kickers deciding American football games (“I keeck a touchdown,” he mocked). Karras was wrong, as well as insensitive. It’s not the nationality, it’s the job. The prospect of kickers dominating the game is no more appealing now that most of them are homegrown. A bunch of soccer refugees with overdeveloped calf muscles have made field goals virtually automatic and, to boot, ruined the most exciting play in football, the kickoff return. Here’s a typical five minutes of TV action: field goal, TV timeout, kickoff out of the end zone, TV timeout. Hard to catch your breath.
The networks say they’re losing money on the games. NBC warns it may drop the NFL if it doesn’t get a better deal. In the meantime, the poor viewer suffers. Which is worse: endless chatter from game “analysts” who have nothing to say, or the endless repetition of faux rock anthems for everything from trucks to cotton clothes?
Once upon a time guys played the entire 48-minute game. Now only a handful of players are on the field for more than a few downs running, and everybody needs midseason holidays. Giving each team a couple of Sunday byes was actually a sop to the networks, two extra weeks of telecasts to recoup their losses on the NFL. But for the fans, more has turned out to be less. Football fans crave Sunday action. While watching one game, they’re dying for score updates and highlights from other games. On bye weekends, there aren’t enough “other games” going on. Nobody likes eight-way ties in the office pool.
Buffalo could reach its fourth straight Super Bowl, a remarkable achievement and one every fan is dreading. The prospect of the football year climaxing with vet another drubbing of the Bills has cast a pall on the entire season.
Boston College 41, Notre Dame 39. That’s a touchdown more than was scored the same weekend in four NFL thrillers combined: Giants 7, Eagles 3; Rams 10, Redskins 6; Raiders 12, Chargers 7, and Jets 17, Bengals 12. BC-Notre Dame featured 50 first downs, 900 yards total offense, a faked punt on the very first series of plays, a successful onside kickoff early in the game and a running-back-to-quarterback pass for a 2-point conversion. It’s a nobrainer which weekend afternoon to do chores and which to go couch potato.
Baseball’s woes began when there was more news off the field than on. The NFL must have missed that lesson. These days–with free agency, holdouts, locker-room confrontations with reporters and, of course, lawsuits–it’s hard to tell an NFL team from the New York Mets. There’s every reason to expect a lot more lawsuits. The courtroom is the only place in the NFL where there isn’t panty. The league always loses.
The NFL had better wake up. A few more years of sleep-inducing mediocrity and the NFL will begin to hear the chorus “I used to be a big fan!”
