Tag Archives: nfl

Like football, like bourbon: The real reason for the NFL’s popularity

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pappy van sandersEven if it doesn’t pack as much action as baseball, or even tennis, there’s no denying that football is America’s de facto national pastime. Many point to the game’s amenability to television as the main reason for its ascension to this position, while some look to the work of labor leaders like Gene Upshaw, who led the charge for free agency, ultimately introducing a new era of NFL riches.

Those two factors undoubtedly contributed to the NFL’s rise in popularity, but I don’t think they explain why the NFL is as extremely popular as it is today, when every sport receives tailored television treatment, and the power balance between players and ownership across all major sports is far more even than it probably ever has been. If you step back far enough, football’s not much different than any of the other major sports. How does this otherwise undifferentiated product stay on top?

More than ever before, we’re living in an attention economy. Availability no longer determines value, because, as a result of the proliferation of communication technology, everything is equally available. When sports (and other broadcasted entertainment) are equally available and are available in such a volume that they cannot all be consumed, people must make decisions about which sports components they will follow and which ones the will not. Economics is about the allocation of limited resources, and in the market for sports entertainment, the only limited resource is our attention.

Why does the NFL grab more of the attention of more people than any other sport? Scarcity. Between the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, no professional sports league plays fewer games than the NFL. Moreover, those games are scheduled such that, with minimal deviation, they all are played on the same day. Intentional scarcity makes NFL games both manageably consumable in the attention economy and appointment viewing. Scarcity flips the cost script: having a small number of games and coordinating them on a once-weekly basis means the cost of paying attention to them is low, and because missing one Sunday’s slate of games means missing a significant proportion of the season, not to mention being out of the conversational loop for a full week, the cost of not paying attention is high.

Intentional scarcity might seem like a counterintuitive strategy for boosting a product’s popularity, and the supplier’s revenues, but in a flooded market of generally undifferentiated products, it can be a very successful strategy for generating consumer demand.

Whether the NFL is consciously employing an intentional scarcity strategy is an open question– Roger Goodell’s ongoing push for an expanded season of eighteen games would seem to be contrary to that approach– but there is at least one market in which some manufacturers are openly pursuing an intentional scarcity strategy: the market for bourbon.

The bourbon market has all the essential elements of the sports entertainment market that make it susceptible to the successful pursuit of the intentional scarcity strategy: generally speaking, it is contained of undifferentiated products– competing in the bourbon market is similar to competing in NASCAR– that are present in such great volume that it is practically impossible to consume all of them, at least on a regular basis. The most famous exemplar of the scarcity approach is the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, but it certainly is not the only one.

Intentional scarcity can be a viable strategy for competing in a flooded market of generally undifferentiated products. Regardless of whether the NFL is intentionally engaging in this strategy, the approach is an important contributor to the league’s station atop the sporting world.

NFL Quick Hits 2013: The Fans

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The NFL season begins tonight, when the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens travel to Denver to play the Broncos.

In 2013, NFL fans have so many ways to follow the game, it can be easy to lose track of the notion that this is all supposed to be leisure-time entertainment. The following are suggestions on how to cut through the volumes of NFL-fan-experience accessories and have fun this season:   Continue reading →

Let’s see action! Tennis > Baseball > Football?

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Entering that time of year when baseball and football overlap, I was reminded of the mostly uninteresting sports superiority debate, one football usually wins because of its media popularity and perception that it offers a lot more action than the other sports. It’s pointless to swim against the tide of football supremacy, but is it really true that a football game offers more action than a baseball game?

I found myself reevaluating this question while flipping between baseball and football games on college football’s opening weekend, simultaneously enticed by shiny football and entranced by the playoff potential of my favorite and local baseball teams. Baseball seems slow, of course, and there’s no clock. Most of the time, though, a televised baseball game takes as much time to complete as a televised football game. As a comparison of these two random articles indicates, MLB games actually tend to consume less time than NFL games. The nature of the gameplay is what it is, but a fan is going to spend the same amount of time– roughly three hours– watching a game of one or the other.

We can go deeper and wider, though. Fewer Americans watch tennis than either the official or unofficial national pastimes, but even men’s tennis matches (played as the best of five sets, rather than the women’s best of three) tend to take less time than baseball or football. Moreover, as a set of recent Wall Street Journal studies conclude, it’s tennis– not baseball or football– that packs the most action per match or game.

Read the full article here.

Why do you hate Johnny Manziel?

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After Rice lost to Texas A&M on Saturday, Physguy put fingers to keyboard to write that he hates A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel. Why? It’s tough to tell, exactly. Physguy doesn’t like the on-field taunting and “trash talk to Rice players,” although he concedes that Rice players “were probably trash talking [Manziel] too but didn’t get flagged for it.” He also didn’t like it when Manziel asked his teammates to make room for him on the bench. (For completeness, I might as well add that Manziel apparently Tebowed too.)

When I saw the reigning Heisman Trophy winner make the gesture depicted above on Saturday, it reminded me of Gilbert Arenas’ guns-up pregame celebration following his suspension for presenting firearms in the Washington Wizards’ locker room. Probably not the smartest thing to do, given the context. But then again, guns and the people who use them kill people; autographs, given for a fee or otherwise, do not.

More on context though: 1) the “money” touchdown celebration isn’t a new one for Manziel or A&M; 2) as the USA Today article to which Physguy linked explains, Nick Elder, one of Rice’s own players, defended Manziel, tweeting that he was the player to whom Manziel was talking, and the message was, “what’s up nick, nice hit”; and 3) to state the obvious about football players, Manziel isn’t even the first quarterback to engage in attention-seeking celebrations.

For more on that third point, consider that Manziel’s celebrations are self-referential, and, as such, perhaps preferable. Former Boise State quarterback and probable Detroit Lions starter at some point this season Kellen Moore favored the “double-guns-shoot-your-coach” touchdown celebration. Nothing really wrong with that, but if we’re being hyper-sensitive to these things, there’s at least an element of violence there. It isn’t directed at the other team, like Tim Tebow’s gator chomp, or disrespecting a team’s stadium or symbols.

Maybe Physguy, a Rice fan, is sore because of Manziel’s success against the Owls– in about 1.25 quarters of play, Manziel had three TD passes and no interceptions, going 6/8 for ninety-four yards through the air and nineteen more on the ground– which is ok (Rice sometimes lets games slip away in the second half), but fans of a losing team can’t really quibble with celebrations that are a (showy, but non-offensive to the other team) variant of pointing to the scoreboard. At least Manziel was celebrating successful plays on the way to a win for his team. Over-celebrating when you’re losing is worthy of a critical blog post (e.g., Cam Newton last fall against the Giants); when you’re winning, such are the spoils of victory.

And if it’s perceived snarkiness that concerns Physguy– he wrote that “my Rice Owls . . . stayed classy”– what does he have to say for his beloved Marching Owl Band, which played to the current controversy at least as much as Manziel by wearing Manziel-autograph t-shirts as their uniforms for the day?

Towards the end, Physguy writes: “But this story, despite the title, isn’t about Manziel. It’s first about the media coverage of him.” The frequency with which the ESPN announcers mentioned Manziel and the focus of its cameras on the temporarily suspended quarterback drew Physguy’s scorn. The controversial return to action of the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy is a hugely appropriate story for coverage, though. If Physguy is disappointed that the coverage of Manziel came at the expense of coverage of his team, he should consider that without Manziel on the other side of the ball, Rice isn’t playing on national television last weekend. Moreover, if he really wanted to take issue with the Worldwide Leader’s treatment of a young Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, he should have focused his critical eye on ESPN’s coverage of the New England Patriots’ decision to release Tim Tebow, which aired to the exclusion of an actually compelling human interest story surrounding NFL preseason roster cuts.

Rather than address Physguy’s final full paragraph, which finds him even further afield from the topic at hand, I’ll end by saying that I hope Johnny Manziel can keep it together on and off the field this season, because I want to see him play. While he almost certainly is headed to the NFL next year, I don’t think he has a lot of professional potential. Let’s enjoy Johnny (College) Football in his element as long as we can. No need to hate.

NFL Quick Hits 2013: Dallas Cowboys

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The Dallas Cowboys have developed a new secret this offseason, but the Wall Street Journal got the scoop. What is it? Geometry, of course. Step one “set off a panic in the room” when it was announced. What was it? Become “intensely familiar with the Pythagorean theorem.” Professor Jason Garrett, a Princeton man and the head coach of the Dallas squad, delivers regular lectures on the Greek geometric theorem that go something like this: “‘You know what the hypotenuse is? You’ll say, ‘Yeah, it’s the long side of the triangle,’ and he’ll say, ‘Well, you’re taking the hypotenuse to get to this point instead of taking the two shorter distances, so don’t run [long] around there.'” Garrett also warns against “concepts that are collinear,” because they are potentially “devastating.” Garrett is qualified to opine on such topics because of his Ivy League education: while at Princeton, he set (and still holds) the league record for football pass completion percentage, and sport is why the Ivy League is prestigious. Garrett’s peers unsurprisingly yield to his intellectual authority: “I’ve worked with Jason. He’s very smart and I wouldn’t pass one of his geometry tests,” Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said. Prof. Garrett even gives homework assignments, which some of his players think is total bullshit because they didn’t come to the NFL to play school. Cowboy receiver Dwayne Harris: “I’m terrible at math. The only know math I know is dollar signs.” (Look for Harris to run a lot of serpentine patterns when he reads a double safety blitz this year.) A return to simple geometry may be appropriate for this team, however. Here’s some basic math: since 1997, the Cowboys have won one playoff game. A compass may be just the thing they need to find postseason success.

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Previously
Head Injuries
Fantasy Football Podcast
Adrian Peterson
Ziggy Ansah

NFL Quick Hits 2013: Head Injuries

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There is plenty of evidence showing that the NFL is not interested in addressing football’s head-injury problem to any meaningful extent. The audible volume of the NFL’s actions is beginning to drown out that of its words. The league has to keep uttering those words, though, for both P.R. and legal reasons. Not surprisingly, the NFL and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, are seizing upon the concept of a safer helmet as the panacea for this pesky cranial conundrum. The notion that a stronger helmet will reduce concussions is both intuitively obvious and a complete non-starter. Why? As biomedical engineering expert Richard M. Greenwald explained, “It’s the egg-yolk-inside-the-shell analogy. Making the shell stronger will still scramble the yolk.” A safer helmet, into which the NFL is investing millions of dollars, “will do nothing to protect the brain from rotational acceleration, the unstoppable force of physics inherent in every football tackle. In fact, the helmet will do as much to protect against rotational forces as leatherhead helmets, according to research by the Cleveland Clinic.” Those not surprised by the findings of that research, which was released in 2011, included the NFL and helmet manufacturer Riddell. Those two entities had known since at least 2000 that “no football helmet, no matter how revolutionary, could prevent concussions.” Obviously, both entities have ignored those findings. None of this is to tell you that you should not watch football this season; for now, anyway, you can look elsewhere for moral hand-wringing of that variety. Instead, simply remember that football is a violent activity, and don’t let Roger Goodell tell you otherwise.

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Previously
Fantasy Football Podcast
Adrian Peterson
Ziggy Ansah

ALDLAND Podcast

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Worried about your fantasy football draft? Well this podcast probably won’t help that much. But it might help a little bit. So plug in those headphones and get some advice from ALDLAND on what to do during your fantasy football draft. You can thank us later.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

NFL Quick Hits 2013: Adrian Peterson

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Adrian Peterson’s headline-making 2012 season– he ran for 2,097 yards and averaged 6.0 yards per carry– was even more remarkable in context: he had torn his ACL and MCL in December 2011, yet he was starting for the Vikings on week one of the 2012 season, a mere nine months after the injury. When he did return, he had the best season of his career. Ordinarily, players require a full twelve months of recovery following surgery to repair torn knee ligament. When they do return, their production usually decreases. Peterson was a startling exception on both fronts. Peterson’s recovery was so remarkable, many fans described him as superhuman, while others, along with one Detroit linebacker, were asking whether there might be some other reason for his surprising return. Peterson told that linebacker last season and the rest of us this week: “I’m juicing on the blood of Jesus. Faith is what got me to this point.” It isn’t easy to talk about religion in the sports world, and I’ve touched on it only briefly here, but from a purely conversational/presentational perspective, Peterson needs a response to the question, “Are you juicing?” that does not recall President George W. Bush’s groaner of a response to a question about whether he was turning to a “Plan B” in Iraq: “Actually, I would call that a plan recommended by Baker-Hamilton, so it would be a Plan B-H.” When it comes to answering to opposing linebackers this season, Peterson probably should just let his knees, however reformed, do the talking.

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Previously
Ziggy Ansah

NFL Quick Hits 2013: Ziggy Ansah

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After making the playoffs two seasons ago, the Detroit Lions are trying to rebound from a frustrating 4-12 mark in 2012. While the numbers provide a reason to believe the Lions won’t be as bad– or unlucky– as they were last year and the spotlight rightly belongs on stars like Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford, Reggie Bush, and Ndamukong Suh, plenty will be asked of the team’s first-round draft pick (fifth overall), DE Ziggy Ansah. The question is not whether Ansah presents himself like a young, professional athlete– he answered that in the affirmative on draft day— but whether he will be able to avoid serving as the second coming of Darko Milicic. (After all, Darko thought he knew a thing or two about style too.) Ansah has played twenty-three games of football ever, all of them at BYU, and many of them on special teams. Ansah’s ability to develop his body, which he describes as “a delicate flower,” into one that can help solidify a talented but perpetually raw NFL defense will go a long way in determining whether the Lions will improve on their 2012 season. Coach Jim Schwartz said “the best is yet to come with . . . Ziggy.” When your team spends the fifth overall pick on a player as inexperienced as Ansah, that had better be true.