Shifting Big NFL Games Is Good For The Sport and Its Fans!! (March 20, 2002)

One thing that hasn't gotten much coverage as of late is football, basically because it's out of season. One of these days, someone will create year-round football (no XFL's or USFL's or WFL's or ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZFL's either; it's the NFL or nothing!)

The last few weeks of the NFL football season, especially after Thanksgiving and around Christmas time, those other two big holidays, the races for playoff positions gets wilder and wilder until it climaxs with four teams clinching a division title, two clinching home field advantage and a title, and the other six getting wild card slots.

On any given football week, there are at least two matchups that go nationwide, courtesy of ESPN on Sunday nights and ABC on Monday nights. During the daytime on Sundays, and two Saturdays near the end of the season (though I think there should be more after the college football regular season ends), CBS and Fox present regional coverage of a combined total of 12 or 13 games going to many but not all parts of the country depending on teams taking a bye week. Due to the unpredictable nature of the football teams, some desirable matchups may not be seen in the market you are in.

For example, in San Diego when CBS has to show a dog 1-13 Charger vs some 2-12 team on KFMB, CBS is showing a Denver-Raider showdown for the division title somewhere else in the country (say 90 percent of the nation), plus CBS has regional coverage of other games directed to the matching markets, who also do not see the Denver-Raider showdown either! This isn't fair to the football fan.

Another example: CBS has a double-header while Fox has one game it can show to its markets. Fox has a match between Pittsburgh and New Orleans for home field advantage throughout the playoffs, but it can't show it because Fox, in another regional coverage game, has one of its NFC teams visiting San Diego in an interconference game, and the stupid ticket guarantee has lifted the blackout. Meanwhile, CBS shows a doubleheader between two losing teams battling two borderline teams for a distant shot at wildcard spots. Is this fair? No!

For those who wonder what network broadcasts what games, keep in mind that you can go by "who's the visitor" in the matchup, regardless of who's the home team. CBS airs all San Diego Charger and other AFC games except when these teams are visited by teams from the NFC, which is covered by Fox. Likewise, Fox covers "visiting" NFC teams. Got that?

You get the idea of what all the football fans everywhere have been throughout the many decades of outmoded and outdated regional coverage with restrictions on the games bearing major playoff implications being broadcasted in certain NFL markets and other matters. We keep thinking why don't CBS or Fox just put some of the biggest games in prime-time instead of the afternoons? Problem is that Sundays and Mondays belong to ESPN and ABC respectively. Saturday nights are college football nights. Fridays are high school football nights. Thursdays have some NFL games on, but a four-day rest isn't too desirable.

Fortunately, the NFL suits are trying to do something about it.

from Broadcasting and Cable

NFL: We need scheduling flexibility... At an annual owners' meeting Monday in Orlando, Fla., National Football League commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he wants the TV networks to give the league the flexibility to move some marquee games from Sunday afternoon to Monday night in the last four weeks of the season, NFL.com reported.

The idea is to identify the key matchups as the season unfolds, then make sure ABC's Monday Night Football prime time slot has some of those pivotal games. Not doing so has made for some late-season Monday-night yawners, when matchups that looked golden in September had tarnished by late season. For example, two years ago, neither the Baltimore Ravens nor New York Giants, who battled it out in the Super Bowl, had been preseason picks to get there. Neither had a Monday-night game that year.

At the other end of the spectrum, the final Monday night game of the 2000 season was a 31-0 victory by Tennessee against Dallas. The Cowboys were expected to be strong that season, but finished 5-11.

There also was a Monday night game late that season between New England, which finished 5-11, and Kansas City, which was 7-9.

ABC would obviously welcome the move to get stronger Monday-night games, while Fox and CBS may take some convincing.

"We will ensure that there will be attractive games in all of the time slots on Sunday and on Monday nights," Tagliabue reportedly told the group of club presidents, head coaches, front-office employees and league officials. "I think we can make it a win-win situation. We could make sure that CBS and Fox both have strong programming late in the season."

The league wants to help out "MNF," whose ratings have sagged in recent years because of overall audience erosion in primetime and the growing inability to predict before the season which teams will be the strongest. The sagging Monday Night Football sports broadcast has been tinkering with its broadcast booth lineup, and scored a major coup recently with its signing of John Madden.

MNF has been plagued from time to time with games featuring teams which are completely out of the playoff picture. The NFL, which is responsible for scheduling the games, tries to provide good matchups, but it has no way of knowing before the season, when the schedule is drawn up, which teams are going to defeat predictions and either achieve unexpected success or go in the tank.

The games to be switched would have to be consistent with the two networks that carry Sunday games. For example, if the Monday night game to be switched would wind up on Fox -- say, Washington-San Francisco -- the game switched to Monday night would also be on Fox. If the Monday night game to be dropped is a CBS game, it would be replaced by a game originally scheduled to be shown Sunday by CBS.. The change would be decided at least four weeks in advance.

Giving MNF a prime matchup is not without its own backlash. The odds are that the playoff implication game which goes to ABC will come from Fox or CBS, to be replaced by the dog that ABC is jettisoning.

The 2002 schedule is expected to be released next week or so says Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Historically, drawing up the NFL schedule involves dickering among the networks.

ABC, naturally, wants the most attractive games for Monday night and the other two want to keep their good games, particularly for the late-afternoon time slot. For the past several seasons, ABC has been requesting more flexibility because of the difficulty of predicting the strength of teams when the schedule is released in the spring.

In other developments, the competition committee discussed nine changes in the rules, most of them minor, such as starting the clock on kickoffs when the ball is touched -- something currently done only in the last two minutes of halves.

It also recommended the clock not be stopped on a sack in the last two minutes to reward defenses for making good plays. Under current rules, the clock stops for five seconds on a sack.

Jay Posner - TV/Radio Sports - The San Diego Union
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There's no flex in CBS, Fox stands on NFL

When it comes to the NFL's idea of a flexible schedule for late-season "Monday Night Football" games, it appears CBS and Fox have the same reaction.

Flex this.

"There's no way they're going to let this happen," said a source familiar with the networks. "There's no way they could make it work unless they hand back hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's no way the NFL will do that.

"It's like the old Army quote: This is not what I signed up for."

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said this week he's optimistic a deal can be worked out whereby Fox and CBS would allow ABC, with four weeks notice, to switch a Sunday game to Monday during the last four weeks of the season. That would prevent ABC from having to show unattractive matchups between teams that were supposed to be strong but wound up having poor seasons.

"We're obviously thrilled this is still being considered for this season," ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said. "We've always felt it would be good for the league and ABC, and definitely good for the fans, who ought to be able to see meaningful games at the end of the year in the most important time period for the NFL."

No argument there, except . . .

The NFL's TV contracts run through 2005, which means both CBS and Fox must sign off on the deal for it to happen.

CBS Sports president Sean McManus was quoted this week as saying he would agree only if it helped generate more revenue for his network. It's hard to see how losing a potentially attractive game to ABC would do that, except in terms of possibly exposing the NFL to more viewers, which would benefit all the networks.

(Then again, the NFL could help expose its product to more viewers if it would change some of its archaic TV policies, but we've banged our head against that wall before.)

Fox Sports chairman David Hill did not comment this week, but he once said he would fight a flexible schedule "with every fiber of my being," and there are no indications his feelings have changed.

Fox spokesman Dan Bell declined to comment "until we have discussions with the league, which we have not had."

If Fox and/or CBS won't sign off, there's always this: Give ABC the option to switch prime-time games with ESPN, which has the Sunday night package. Both networks are owned by Disney.

John Maffei - North County Times TV/Sports
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NFL's decision on 'MNF' angers CBS, Fox

Over the last eight years, the NFL's showcase ---- "Monday Night Football" on ABC ---- has seen its ratings slide a whopping 35 percent. Time changes, poor choices in announcers (yes, I mean Dennis Miller) and horrible games have sabotaged the NFL's premier property.

For years, ABC officials have lobbied NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to give the network some relief, to allow it flexibility in scheduling ---- especially in the last four weeks of the season, when playoff races are heating up.

It's a matter Tagliabue takes seriously, but the commissioner managed to anger two of the league's other TV partners ---- CBS and Fox ---- when he announced earlier this week he may allow ABC to pick and choose late-season games for "Monday Night Football."

He never told executives at CBS or Fox he was going to drop that bomb.

``I was very surprised by Tagliabue's announcement,'' said CBS executive producer Terry Ewert.'' ``There have been discussions in the past, but we weren't aware of any current discussions. This will be addressed in the next few weeks.''

Don't expect happy talk. CBS and Fox pay billions in rights fees and aren't about to let ABC take good games away from them.

ABC's argument is that scheduling games at the start of the season and being locked into them creates the possibility of pathetic matchups. That's a crapshoot ABC would like to avoid by getting some flexibility.

With a number of games available to them, CBS and Fox have that flexibility every week. The networks must send all games into local markets, but has a choice in games that are aired to the wider audience.

Executives at CBS and Fox plan to lay out the facts to Tagliabue.

``We want to ensure that there will be attractive games in all time slots on Sunday and on Monday nights,'' Tagliabue said. ``We would make sure CBS and Fox both have strong programming late in the season.''

CBS and Fox will argue that already happens.

The last seven "MNF" games last season involved at least one playoff team. Over the last four seasons, 17 of 19 "MNF" games in December have involved playoff teams. So how much relief can a flexible December schedule provide?

Any changes in scheduling would have to be agreed upon by all parties. CBS and Fox aren't going to let that happen unless it benefits them.

Maybe the answer is to make the "MNF" telecasts more entertaining.

ESPN has the same problem as ABC on its Sunday night NFL telecasts ---- locked into a schedule at the start of the season. But with Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire, ESPN's telecasts are both informative and entertaining.

Letting Dennis Miller go and hiring John Madden is one step in the right direction for ABC. Stopping the whining would be another.

NCAA fallout

Honestly, I thought my voicemail was going to have a meltdown. The volume of messages left last week and the nasty nature of most of them was a baseball-bat-in-the-head reminder of how passionate viewers are about sports, especially March Madness.

San Diegans were furious officials at Channel 8 decided to air the preliminary hearings in the Danielle van Dam case instead of first-round play in the NCAA Tournament ---- and they let us and Channel 8 know it.

On Friday, however, the fans' anger boiled over.

Channel 8 officials promised they would show the San Diego State-Illinois game in its entirety, and they did. But the preceding Florida-Creighton contest went double overtime, causing a delay in the tipoff for the Aztecs game which was at the same site.

Obviously, a number of SDSU fans aren't necessarily fans of the tournament, because they lit up the voicemail complaining in four-letter language that they weren't getting the Aztecs game as promised.

It wasn't until the switchboard at Channel 8 lit up that management at the station realized how many fans were misinformed and ran a crawl along the bottom of the screen, saying the Aztecs were still coming up.

More hoops

CBS is getting better at switching from bad games to good, but the network is far from perfect. Last Saturday, CBS executive producer Terry Ewert said the network ``was a little too aggressive'' in switching games.

Ewert said CBS' philosophy on switching games is ``to deliver the largest audience to the most competitive game. We make a lot of decisions on the fly.''

A split-screen feed could solve some problems, but Ewert said that is a complicated process because of audio problems. And it's hard to identify players when the screen shrinks.

Some of the complaints last week came from fans who wanted to see a game other than the one being aired. CBS could eliminate some of its problems by getting a cable partner so more games could be shown. But Ewert said CBS has had no discussion about that.