Official NFL Week 11 Early Games Thread

[MicroBob]

I finally have the damn NFL Network as well as ESPNU so I'm relatively happy about that.

still missing Big10 network and CSTV although the latter is easily viewable on the internet.

Then there are the various FSN's that are available if I pay more for some special package and I'm just not willing to do that. Some of the region games I'm missing seem marginally interesting to me but I already pay enough as it is.


Could be worse -
In a couple weeks we're visiting my GF's brother for a week and he doesn't really care about american football so he has the Latino-satellite package where all he gets is ESPN-Deportes and a zillion different soccer channels.

[MicroBob]

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I hate you NFL for having the most restrictive join-in-progress rules ever. This was a great finish and there is no reason I should have been blacked-out from seeing it.

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Why am I under the impression that this is because of the Supreme Court ruling all those years ago? I could very well be misinformed but I think that is what is causing all this.

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Not at all sure what supreme ct ruling you are referring to here.
I really don't know much about it but I guess I just assumed it was the NFL purposefully doing this to protect their product from market to market or something silly like that.

It's always been this way with the NFL as best I can remember. I recall not getting to see many finishes many yrs ago...or even getting cut-off live join-in-progress from the game they were showing the end of because they had already shown as much as they were allowed to of a non-market regional-game...like 3 mins or 5 mins or something like that.

That is what happened here. I was getting to see live coverage of the BAL/CLE game. But then at the end they switched it to the studio guys so I got James Brown telling me that CLE was going to try a FG, etc.

[IggyWH]

Bob,

It sucked seeing them give the play by play, but I did like to see Cowher's joke about Phil Dawson last week completely bomb while he's smiling his ass off.

[FlyWf]

The reason I(and presumably much of the country) couldn't watch it is because this was a one game day for CBS and the Fox late game started at 4:15. CBS is allowed to join out-of-market games in progress until 4:15.

I'm not sure what happens in areas where there isn't a local AFC team and the affiliate selected Browns-Ravens as the game. The regional selection system is complex, IIRC, and I know the one game network is allowed to run late if their market is assigned to that team.

[BillNye]

Very painful to watch them do the play by play, they all try to talk at once and I'm just like plz shut up and then show us the delayed highlight so you dont spoil it "OMG WHAT A KICK I THINK HE MADE IT OOO WAIT DID HE WTF?" Then they dont show it for 20sec and Im sitting there like, you gotta be kidding me.

[MicroBob]

yeah, i am really vaguely familiar with those rules in that I know it goes 'something like that'.
But I'm arguing that it doesn't have to be that way.

They are dumb in how they are protecting the other network's national time-slot game so much and should not have such idiotic rules.

Letting everybody see a fantastic 4th Q finish is better for the whole league than trying to protect the late-game network when it's the 1st Q of DAL/WAS.
Forcing a good percentage of the country to watch James Brown to play-by-play from the studio hurts the league.

Why you want to keep the whole country from seeing your league and it's very most exciting just so they are forced to only watch a studio-host TALK about the game or instead switch over the 1st Q of DAL/WAS is beyond me.

The league should want the whole country to see as many fantastic finishes as possible.
In fact, I would even be in favor of staggared start-times like in the NCAA-hoops tournament so that you have a greater chance of catching the last 2 minutes of as many different games as possible.

It ends up hurting a little bit the network that is showing the late national game.
But that affects both networks equally. And they both would benefit way more from getting to cut from one great finish to another completely uninhibited.

[MicroBob]

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Very painful to watch them do the play by play, they all try to talk at once and I'm just like plz shut up and then show us the delayed highlight so you dont spoil it "OMG WHAT A KICK I THINK HE MADE IT OOO WAIT DID HE WTF?" Then they dont show it for 20sec and Im sitting there like, you gotta be kidding me.

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BillNye - exactly.

and it's something i'm not even sure the NFL execs fully realize is a problem.
Every single Sunday when they are watching games they have whatever satellite hook-up they want.
They get to say, "Hey, I don't want to watch Bill Cowher babble about it. Lets just watch it live."

They don't even think of the little people like us who are screaming, "Shut up already and just show me the damn game."
I'm not sure they have an awareness of how much they are actually hurting their own league.
This is quite a statement though considering that the NFL is a hugely successful product and TV ratings are generally pretty good and you have networks spending mucho dollars for the broadcast rights.
But just because it is already a hugely popular product does not mean it couldn't be improved. I would argue that it has achieved its level of success IN SPITE OF some of it's obvious flaws including limiting the number of games you get to see in a given year and all that messy in-studio-because-we-aren't-allowed-to-show-you-this-yet stuff.

[MicroBob]

I'm reminded of the early days of baseball on radio.

Even through the 50's I believe different teams in NY and elsewhere considered it a really bad idea to broadcast their home games because it would hurt attendance.
they were afriad too many fans would think, "Why bother going to the game? I can just stay home and listen to it and find out who wins."

Eventually they realised that being the first to find out who wins is not the only reason people attend games. They go for the fun and the atmosphere and to be there live.
The smart teams figured out that broadcasting the home games could actually help their team as it effectively served as a 3-hour advertisement for their product and could encourage people to come to the ballpark.


I just think more exposure is better. Limiting yourself by having a majority of the games played at the exact same time and blacking-out various markets and forcing them to watch bad matchups because their local team is playing just feels so old-fashioned to me and unwise.

In my area today, my Fox affiliate was stuck showing me the damn ATL/TB game which was ridiculously bad.
It's about 85-0 with 2 minutes left and is dragging on and on...but then ATL did score in the last minute to break up the shutout. Oh goodie. Glad I saw that instead of something else.

[Jeremy517]

According to the NFL, when the Cleveland-Baltimore ref went under the hood, he was told via the headset that he couldn't see any video because the play wasn't reviewable. He then talked to the back judges, and one felt strongly that the kick hit the support bar, so they went with that call.

Not that I expect many Ravens fans to believe it, but it sounds to me that everything was on the up-and-up and that the right call was made, so no harm done.

[jstnrgrs]

I believe that the only government involvement (I don't know if it is a court case or an act of congress) say that you can't black out sold out home games in the local market. I think that years ago, they blacked out all home games locally weather or not they were sold out (in fairness to those who bought tickets to the game i guess).

There is no reason that they couldn't set up the contracts to allow netowrks to show join in progress games after 4:15.

I wish they would allow both networks to show double headers every week, even against the local team. I say you can never have too much football.