Wednesday, October 20, 2010

TV Timeouts during NFL Games

The NFL showed why it is the premiere sports league in America with the highest value of its franchises: blatantly injecting as much commercialism as the American viewers can handle.  With two minutes to go in a blowout game between the Tennessee Titans and the Jacksonville Jaguars, the referees asked the Coach of the Titans to call timeouts simply to show ads to the viewers.

Its depressing.  And lame.  And shows why NFL teams make so much money.

Now the NFL is addressing concussion concerns and is threatening to suspend players who make violent helmet-to-helmet concerns and is attempting to address the culture of carelessness to physical violence in the NFL.   This is all a result of external pressures and none of it comes from any desire to decrease the occurrence of injuries in the most violent sport around by the NFL.

What lessons are to be learned from this ? Perhaps it is best to come up with something intriguing so people want to watch, them sell lots of advertisements to generate revenue.

The other thought I've had is how difficult it is to break into the NFL's monopoly on football.  Simply put, no one else could make a league that can really compete with them for violent outdoor sports.  The only other option to really consider is soccer, which is also an outdoor sport and caters to the same type of fans.

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