A Break From 12 Months of the NFL
A Break From 12 Months of the NFL
By JASON GAY
April 1, 2015
The Wall Street Journal
You probably saw the news that the two biggest names in this year’s NFL draft (quarterbacks Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota) are skipping this year’s NFL draft. Both guys want to be home with family, and it’s hard to blame them. I know some folks get excited about the draft, but that destination wedding can be pretty snoozy. The draft is still basically a series of phone calls interrupted by applause. Not much else happens. In the meantime, you have to listen to a lot of blabbing about “upside” and “intangibles.” For players, there’s a lot of sitting around. (Sometimes there’s a mortifying amount of sitting around—ask Aaron Rodgers, that quarterback from California, whatever happened to that guy?) You also have to dress up. You end up in a suit and probably a tie. You don’t have to wear a suit—you could wear flip flops and a Motörhead T-shirt, which would be fantastic—but chances are somebody is going to dress you up like it’s a bad prom. You will probably make a mistake with a vest. Vests were in, but now they’re out. You heard it here first. Sorry.
The NFL will behave as if it’s not bummed out about Winston and Mariota skipping the draft, but it has to be bummed out, because the draft is the centerpiece of the NFL’s plan for full calendar domination, and this year, they’ve transferred the clambake from New York to Chicago. Football is no longer satisfied with hogging the 93% of the U.S. cultural conversation from September until February. Now it wants the six months it isn’t playing football. If there were 43 months in the year, it would want those too. The NFL would love it if football is the first thing on your mind when you wake up, the last thing you think about before you go to bed, and if you’re one of those basket cases who checks his or her phone at 3:30 a.m. when you get up to use the lavatory, it wants you to think about football, too. Basically the NFL wants you to be Bill Belichick, but maybe a tad less grumpy.
This isn't a secret plan. They’re upfront with this. In a story last week from the Journal’s NFL reporter Kevin Clark, NFL executives openly talked about their off-season growth. There is no shortage of semi-banal events that can now be repurposed for your entertainment. Thanks to the success of the NFL rookie combine (rookies running and jumping) there’s now a veteran’s combine (veterans running and jumping) and even regional combines of overlooked players (overlooked regional players running and jumping.) I will be disappointed if we don't soon have the Very Small Vermont Towns With Wooden Bridges combine, the La Guardia Airport Combine, the Middle Earth combine, the combine of Random Dudes Assembled in the Line of Whole Foods, and the pet combine. (I would totally watch the NFL Pet Combine.)
It’s getting bonkers. It’s hard to avoid it. The other day in the office, I watched coverage of Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly sitting at a breakfast table. This was on TV. Granted it wasn’t Kelly digging into an egg white omelet; he was taking questions from the media at the NFL Annual Meetings. (Kelly has done a lot of zany stuff lately, so people are interested). Still: it was breakfast. Delicious NFL media breakfast.
There is an important conspiring factor here, which is what’s happening in the television business—or rather, what’s not happening in the television business, which is the ability of networks to reliably create programming that appeals to the most desirable demographics of younger viewers, particularly young men. Live sports reaches those viewers like nothing else, and you don’t even need the sports part—it just has to be sports-like, and live, so you don’t DVR it and skip over the ads, and it’s immediately television catnip. The turbulence in the TV audience business has been phenomenal business luck for the live sports industry, and no one’s been better at capitalizing upon it than the NFL.
But you don't have to do it! Here are some things you can do if you’re not interested in 12 months of the NFL:
1. You can watch sports with actual sports going on—just for starters, baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, and hockey. (If you get into watching the Stanley Cup playoffs you may never watch anything ever again.)
2. You can learn to play tennis well enough not to injure yourself or your opponent.
3. You can hum Suzanne Vega songs to yourself.
4. You can stare restlessly at a blank wall.
(Staring restlessly at a blank wall is the same thing as watching the Raiders at the draft.)
Look: I have no problem with an occasional obsession. At the moment, I am obsessed with looking at bicycles I cannot afford on eBay. My 2-year-old has moved on from being obsessed with firetrucks to being obsessed with garbage trucks. We are a nation of passions, which sounds like the title of a really terrible TED talk.
Maybe it’s wise to slow it down. Take off the helmet full of potato chips, walk out into a little sunlight, focus on healthier things. Develop new sports habits and priorities. Maybe a little less football would even be good for football—if the past 12 months have shown anything, it’s how NFL has struggled with its growing position in the culture. Return to a proper sense of proportion. There will be combines, there will be trades, there will be breakfasts, on TV and not. It’s the really the game that matters. Winston and Mariota might have it right. The NFL draft is a big deal, but it’s not for everyone.
Original Link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-break-from-12-months-of-the-nfl-1427930836?tesla=y
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