Nipsey
Footballguy
Called a TD on the field. I thought 95%+ not a catch after watching review. 95%+ is not indisputable. Would need on-field refs to be superhuman to accurately determine every play like that one.
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NFL viewership off 11% YOY (1 Viewer)
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Shutout
Footballguy
I think GregR has the gist of this in how he explains a few things.
The issue in almost all of this, in simple terms, is a large aspect of the most important part of the game (scoring) doesn't always pass the eyeball test to the majority of the knowledgeable portion of the fanbase. So, in a short period of time, the NFL has attempted to basically retrain the core of its fans and fans simply don't accept it. A 40 year old man who grew up playing and watching football knows what a catch is. Why can't the refs? You know if you catch a ball and twist and jump in the airing cros the end zone, you scored a touchdown. We don't need to wait five minutes while the officials suck the life out of the moment, while you listen to the expert commentators argue it back and forth (and then be wrong). You scored a touchdown.
The day Calvin Johnson caught that ball in Chicago and won that game that the Lions ultimately lost because of this ridiculous over-analysis, the NFL stepped on a banana peel in an ice rink. They can never get back and the NFL is worse for it.
The issue in almost all of this, in simple terms, is a large aspect of the most important part of the game (scoring) doesn't always pass the eyeball test to the majority of the knowledgeable portion of the fanbase. So, in a short period of time, the NFL has attempted to basically retrain the core of its fans and fans simply don't accept it. A 40 year old man who grew up playing and watching football knows what a catch is. Why can't the refs? You know if you catch a ball and twist and jump in the airing cros the end zone, you scored a touchdown. We don't need to wait five minutes while the officials suck the life out of the moment, while you listen to the expert commentators argue it back and forth (and then be wrong). You scored a touchdown.
The day Calvin Johnson caught that ball in Chicago and won that game that the Lions ultimately lost because of this ridiculous over-analysis, the NFL stepped on a banana peel in an ice rink. They can never get back and the NFL is worse for it.
Shutout
Footballguy
The theory of it is great. The execution was terrible. The truth of the matter is this is akin to trying to perform space travel calculations using only paper and pen. They are using inefficient , outdated means.
Technology is to the point where they could easily put chips in the balls that could place a ball to the millimeter. Yet they run around with measuring chains that rely on the eyeballs of a 50-something year old man whose view is obscured by players, distance, and age. They could electronically measure how much pressure is applied to a ball and mathematically determine if a ball was touched, held, moved forward when the QB was hit, moved backwards when the QB was hit, etc, etc, etc.. But instead, they have mean in striped suits running around lending opinions and meeting up to discuss while one of their crew stands and marks the "official" spot with his foot and another throws a hat in a certain direction to indicate something or another.
The world has passed this game by. The archaic structure isn't needed. If the NFL wants this to be a successful modern game, they need to ditch the wagon wheels and buy rubber-composite tires.
To quote the wise Captain Jack Sparrow, "The problem is not the problem. The problem is the NfL's attitude towards the problem."
BoltBacker
Footballguy
And this is what has already been done by the league imo and where we are at now.
In the past there were some horrible inconsistencies in what was being ruled a catch before instant replay. Over the past few decades or so they have tortured the rule so now we wait for 10 minutes...... and there are some horrible inconsistencies in what is being ruled a catch WITH instant replay.
If it's truly impossible to make a rule that can be easily enforced then I agree with the people that say just classify it the same as offensive holding/pass interference. It's a judgement call by the ref and move on already... can't be reviewed.
BoltBacker
Footballguy
I wouldn't mind keeping it for TD's and turnovers. Did the ball break the plane? Was his knee down before the ball came out? Did he step out of bounds? Was the ball tipped by a pass rusher? Plays like that lend themselves to being quickly and easily determined by replay. Not in EVERY instance, but in most instances those calls are decided quickly and accurately by replay. And again, I'd just give each coach a single replay that doesn't get exhausted until the coach is wrong and refs were right.
The current number of replays is madness.
There are injuries every year, but guys like Rodgers, Luck, Palmer, Watson, DJ, OBJ, Wentz for a few games, etc. going down really killed a lot of team offenses.
Also the talk has died down since the start of the season, but the changes to the offseason practice rules has really cratered offensive line play the last few years. That has negatively impacted a lot of offenses as well.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
Sports are dumb.
NREC34
Footballguy
NotSmart
Footballguy
RUSF18
Footballguy
I've never really been anti-replay until all this catch rule stuff, but it's an interesting exercise to think back to how this all started and see how we ended up here. One of the big drivers of replay being added was when Vinny Testeverde landed with his helmet on the goal line, but the ball fell way short. He was given a TD even though everyone and their mother knew the ball didn't come close to breaking the plane. You didn't really need instant replay there, at least not the frame by frame views we see now. Literally any angle at regular speed would have done the trick. But fast forward a couple of decades and we use replay to catch things that the human eye can never see at game speed.
Similar story in the NHL with it's offsides reviews. It got put into place because a linesman fell asleep at a crucial time and missed Matt Duschene offsides by literally 5 feet before he scored a big goal. He was so offside that you may only see a player go offside by that much once a year, if that. Anyone watching on a fuzzy 13 inch black and white Magnavox from the mid 80s could have spotted it.
Fast forward and because of that play, now the NHL overturns goals when a skate blade is literally millimeters off the ice and can only be seen on a blown up freeze frame.
Similar story in the NHL with it's offsides reviews. It got put into place because a linesman fell asleep at a crucial time and missed Matt Duschene offsides by literally 5 feet before he scored a big goal. He was so offside that you may only see a player go offside by that much once a year, if that. Anyone watching on a fuzzy 13 inch black and white Magnavox from the mid 80s could have spotted it.
Fast forward and because of that play, now the NHL overturns goals when a skate blade is literally millimeters off the ice and can only be seen on a blown up freeze frame.
BoltBacker
Footballguy
And they should.
In all instances where it's as simple as "Is it in or out?" and the answer can be had almost instantly they should use the technology. It's made tennis much better not only because the calls are correct more often but the analysis/complaining about that call have been nipped in the bud.
The problems come when the replay is trying to clarify if someone is making a "football move" or if they merely are touching the ball or "possessing" the ball as they roll around out of bounds.
BoltBacker
Footballguy
Can't be soon enough. I may actually watch a game again. The fact that something as fundamental to the game as the strike zone moving around(sometimes from hitter to hitter) makes the game of baseball almost as unwatchable as the NBA, where there has ALWAYS been a completely different set of rules for the players based on how big a star they were or weren't.
Hang 10
Footballguy
Yep. The reasoning behind replay was to stop games from being won or lost on egregious officiating errors and today it's supposed insure a perfectly called game. The later is an unattainable standard. Now they literally have to change/clarify rules to account for replay machines that can see 1000 times better than the human eye. It's crazy.
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[scooter]
Footballguy
TheFanatic
Footballguy
comfortably numb
Footballguy
Lol...you freaks are insane and need some serious looking in the mirror if we're really talking obama/trump here
Interesting article below...
Deadspin: For The Last Time: NFL Ratings Are Not Down. They're Up, Compared To Everything Else.
https://deadspin.com/for-the-last-time-nfl-ratings-are-not-down-theyre-up-1827378925
Deadspin: For The Last Time: NFL Ratings Are Not Down. They're Up, Compared To Everything Else.
https://deadspin.com/for-the-last-time-nfl-ratings-are-not-down-theyre-up-1827378925
grateful zed
Footballguy
fake news?
snogger
Footballguy
Tried to explain this to my Father In-law and Brother in-law a few weeks ago when they spewed forth "The NFL Ratings suck because of the protests" . But they wouldn't have any of it.. in their mind, Trump is 100% correct in that the NFL Ratings are down purely and solely because of the protests and not just that less people are watching TV now days. <_<
Joe Summer
Footballguy
Now you can point out to your in-laws that NFL ratings are actually *up*, which must therefore mean that people support the protests, which must therefore mean that Trump is 100% wrong.
:trumpsupporterlogic:
:trumpsupporterlogic:
snogger
Footballguy
Before the supporter alarm bells go off.... My argument had nothing to do with if the protests were hurting the NFL or not..
Just that you can't go by TV Ratings alone... TV watching isn't the same today as it once was.. I know quite a few people who DVR games to watch later when they can fast forward through commercials, half-time, etc...
Todem
Footballguy
And this is why replay is destroying sports. Absolutely destroying the human spirit of not being perfect. If the human eye can't see it in real time speed......are we really playing sports anymore?
It's utter BS.
Get rid of it. All of it.
DallasDMac
Footballguy
The article title sort of cracks me up. Basically because he fully admits ratings are down. The fact they are down less than other things he compares them to does nothing to change the simple fact that they are down. He should really remove the "For The Last Time: NFL Ratings Are Not Down." part of his article title, because he proves himself it is patently false statement. He really needs to go with something like "NFL ratings are not down when compared to these other things."
Joe Summer
Footballguy
College football ratings were mostly down in 2017; baseball was down earlier this year but has stabilized. The NHL was down locally but up slightly for the playoffs.
NASCAR is way down -- probably the largest ratings drop in the history of sports (more than 30% down in just 2 years).
NBA ratings are up, though.
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
MLB ratings & attendance are both down. Too many strikeouts instead of protests.
comfortably numb
Footballguy
I was in favor of replay on some level for the longest.
We've gone to the point of overcorrection
I'd now abolish all of it all together as most sports cant seem to use it properly without turning the game into a cross examination on the field.
Game winning shot...YES!!!!!! Celebration!!!
Wait......
Wait
...trepid celebrating
Wait
All replays show its good......
Wait
Wait
Official says its good!!!!
Awkward recelebration ensues
Yay sports!
NewlyRetired
Footballguy
An absolute blood bath is occurring in NASCAR. I don't remember ever seeing any US sport shed fans this quickly. And its not just TV ratings, attendance is off as well. I don't follow NASCAR, was their a controversy or scandal that caused this?
Look at these numbers for various races:
Race A: down 30% in ratings and 28% in viewership from last year (2.0, 3.2M) and down 42% and 40% respectively from 2016 (2.4, 3.9M).
Race B: down 27% in ratings and 25% in viewership from last year (2.2, 3.6M) and down 30% and 26% respectively from 2016 (2.3, 3.6M).
Race C: down 18% in ratings and 12% in viewership from last year
Race D: down a tick in ratings and 14% in viewership from last year (1.6, 2.9M) and down 25% in both measures from 2016 (2.0, 3.3M).
Race E: down 25% in ratings and 22% in viewership from last year (1.6, 2.6M) and down 36% and 35% respectively from 2016 (1.9, 3.1M).
Race F: down 19% in ratings and 17% in viewersihp from last year (2.1, 3.4M) and down 32% and 30% respectively from 2016 (2.5, 4.0M).
Race G: down 17% in ratings and 20% in viewership from last year (3.5, 5.9M) and down 28% and 29% respectively from 2016 (4.0, 6.7M).
Race H: down 37% in ratings and 38% in viewership from last year (2.7, 4.5M) and down 37% and 35% respectively from 2016 (2.7, 4.3M)
Race I: down 25% in ratings and 22% in viewership from last year (3.2, 5.2M) and down 40% and 41% respectively from 2016 (4.0, 6.8M).
It just goes on and on....The 4 lowest Daytona 500 ratings in history have come in just the last 5 years.
Hawkeye21
Footballguy
I think American interests are just changing. People are not interested in watching it. Going to a race can be fun but to watch one on TV leaves a lot to be desired.
snogger
Footballguy
Watching Saturday night at Daytona was :( July's race there use to be packed! .. There were so many empty seats NBC made it a point to NOT show the crowd as much as they could..
IMO, a quick fix would be... Keep the stages, but no Caution. You win the Stage, but the race continues...
Would have made Saturday's race a lot more interesting..
5 laps to go in stage 1, Top 5 -10 are staying out, but after that, come in and pit.. Fresh tires and fueled up for the next run.
Stage 2 is coming to the end.. Do you stay out to win stage 2, or pit early for strategy pitting for the final race?
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Joe Summer
Footballguy
I have several friends and relatives who are NASCAR fans, and they've given me a number of reasons for the sport's decline:
- more annoying advertising than ever before.
- the sport has "gone corporate" and it no longer feels like a family atmosphere.
- all the best drivers have retired and there are no charismatic newcomers to take their place.
- everyone is "too PC".
- the current system discourages low-budget teams from being competitive, so there are no "underdog" stories anymore. And it's always the same drivers at every race, so qualifying means nothing.
- the Great Recession of 2007-2010 had a severe impact on the disposable income of your average NASCAR fan.
Most of these reasons could also apply to every other sport, so I have a hard time believing that they could cause such a huge impact on popularity. I understand that the recession probably had a major impact, but the sport still had massive attendance numbers from 2011-2015 so that can't be the only explanation. I wonder if the whole "NASCAR dad" phenomenon was just a myth perpetuated by the media and that the sport really never had much mainstream popularity to begin with?
NewlyRetired
Footballguy
I remember in the 90's and early 2000's the sport was just killing it at the gate and on tv. In doing some research it looks like the drop started about a decade ago and has picked up steam in the past couple of years.Watching Saturday night at Daytona was :( July's race there use to be packed! .m. There were so many empty seats NBC made it a point o NOT show the crowd as much as they could..
IMO, a quick fix would be... Keep the stages, but no Caution. You win the Stage, but the race continues...
Would have made Saturday's race a lot more interesting..
5 laps to go in stage 1, Top 5 -10 are staying out, but after that, come in and pit.. Fresh tires and fueled up for the next run.
Stage 2 is coming to the end.. Do you stay out to win stage 2, or pit early for strategy pitting for the final race?
The viewers it pulls in are still relatively good compared to most sports but they have to find a way to stabilize soon. These types of drops are unsustainable from a business point of view if they go on too many more years.
Todem
Footballguy
Agree 100%.
I gotta tell ya....when replay first came to the NFL it was fine.
2 challenges per half. You lose the challenge....then you lose a time out and the the ability to challenge again in the half.
No challenges in the last 2 minutes of either half.
Done.
It's insane today. Totally insane. Every score, and turnover is subject to review and we no longer (Well I know what a catch is) have the ability to know what a catch is anymore with all the slo-mo hd breakdown BS that goes on.
NewlyRetired
Footballguy
soccer has its own myriad of problems, like all sports, but the one thing it has gotten right is how fast they do the replay. The guys in the booth take 10 seconds to tell the ref. The ref then sprints to sideline and makes a determination with in 15 seconds, sprints back and game resumes.
The NFL milking this for every extra second of commercial time has gone over the top.
TheFanatic
Footballguy
Hockey is even worse. Guys skate in, set up a play, make some passes, someone shoots, the puck goes in the back of the net and then the coach challenges whether or not the play was off sides. So now they rewind the tape to when they first skated in to see if some guy's toe was across the line. Talk about sucking the life out of a building.
NotSmart
Footballguy
The NFL has a Gajillion dollars.
They could easily design a fast, efficient, and almost always accurate system if they wanted to.
Clearly they don't want to.
I'm honestly not sure if it's because:
They could easily design a fast, efficient, and almost always accurate system if they wanted to.
Clearly they don't want to.
I'm honestly not sure if it's because:
- They don't want to spend the $$$
- They get some kind of benefit out of having the system be the screwed up inefficient way it is now
- Some mystery reason
pollardsvision
Footballguy
Ding, ding, ding. Mostly, it's more time for commercial breaks. Also, I'm sure there's some short-term benefit having controversial calls extend the NFL weekly news cycle a little bit.NotSmart said:
It'll never happen, but I agree with some that no replay at all is better than the current situation.
But the NFL has no interest in speeding up the flow of the games. I assume stadium attendance will only decrease in the future, so they have to milk the telecasts for every penny. IMO, the only way the NFL improves it's product is for people to stop watching.I have no idea if there will ever be a significant enough portion of the viewing audience that will walk away to make flow of the game something the NFL takes seriously.
rustycolts
Footballguy
I remember going to the Daytona 500,Firecracker 400 and Rockingham with my dad when I was a kid. I really loved it the atmosphere was awesome. I was a long time fan. How ever my interest has dwindled to non existence.
It started with Dale Earnhardt's death. He was my favorite driver. They still have talented drivers,but they either have no personality or are not allowed to have one. There are really no rivalries anymore except for maybe Buch and Larson. No bad guys like Earnhardt for people to either love or hate. They keep changing the rules. Playoffs are a joke go back to points.
They have to many inspections if you ain't cheating you ain't trying. They really have cracked down on how they allow the drivers to race. If you ain't rubbing you ain't racing. Also there seems to be a lot of orchestrated finishes kind of like the WWE.
Oh I do still have a soft spot for NASCAR. It is the reason my wife and I are married. She was a Nascar fan loved Rusty Wallace. I of course was a Dale fan. We made a bet on who would win the Darlington race that year. Loser had to buy dinner. I won it was our first date and 6 months later we were married.
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snogger
Footballguy
One of my issues lately is allowing "Forced crashes" to be considered "racing"... Couple weeks ago Larson who was
hard and bumped Busch on the side.. Wasn't trying to knock Busch out, just hard racing that caused a bump/hit and I love that kind of racing.Busch retaliated by hitting Larson's car from behind.. That, IMO, isn't racing hard.. That is an outright "forced Crash" that Nascar use to come down hard on racers.
Had Busch pulled along side Larson and "bumped" him, then fine, racing.. but when you purposely ram the car in front of you, you should not be rewarded with a victory.
But now it is just "Racing".. at some point it will get out of control, but will probably take a major injury or death for Nascar to call it out for what it is..
snogger
Footballguy
I agree it is about the money.. Review, commercial break, back..
But can't imagine people NOT watching the NFL because of the speed of the game.. I can see more and more doing as my cousin does and DVR the games and watch them later to skip through the commercials and Half-time..
But outright not watching solely based on games taking longer..
GregR
Footballguy
My experience working at large corporations who also have Gajillions of dollars has taught me that amount of money matters little when human beings still have to make the decisions. People are still frequently not very smart about how they do things. People rarely want to change things from how they have always been done. I think that's the 90% of why it is the way it is.NotSmart said:
DallasDMac
Footballguy
Life can be busy. It was always hard for me to put together time to watch a game. With the games dragging on and on with endless commercial breaks, it definitely pushed me to choose "other" when it was time to make the choice on a Sunday afternoon. I probably watched the equivalent of maybe three full games last season. The NFL just isn't THAT important to me.But outright not watching solely based on games taking longer..
snogger
Footballguy
My Fall/Winter Sunday's for the past 20+ years have been and will continue to be "Football" day... Family members know not to invite me anywhere on Sunday's during Football season as I won't be there.
There is no other sport that even comes close to "sucking me in" as the NFL does.
shadyridr
Footballguy
It used to be like that for me too until this past year. Then Sunday's became my son's flag football/ little league fall ball days and I'm surprised how little i missed my Sunday football day.My Fall/Winter Sunday's for the past 20+ years have been and will continue to be "Football" day... Family members know not to invite me anywhere on Sunday's during Football season as I won't be there.
There is no other sport that even comes close to "sucking me in" as the NFL does.
snogger
Footballguy
As of a couple weeks ago we are officially "Empty Nester's" so free time is not something I'm short on...It used to be like that for me too until this past year. Then Sunday's became my son's flag football/ little league fall ball days and I'm surprised how little i missed my Sunday football day.My Fall/Winter Sunday's for the past 20+ years have been and will continue to be "Football" day... Family members know not to invite me anywhere on Sunday's during Football season as I won't be there.
There is no other sport that even comes close to "sucking me in" as the NFL does.
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