Cavs schedule: Preseason game at OSU set, Christmas Day at Golden State rumored
August 7, 2015The Era of the Pseudo Browns
August 7, 2015I love football. That’s probably the laziest way to start a post, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I figuratively stammer out that platitude.1 My feeble attempt to articulate my inexplicable affection for a silly game is as eloquent and profound as Brick Tamland’s “I love lamp.”
But the statement’s absence of imagination and lack of technical brilliance make it no less true.
“I love football.” I love the beauty of magnificent bodies in motion all acting as one organism to accomplish a goal. I love the majestic flight of a ball that somehow evades eleven people hellbent on altering its trajectory in the most violent fashion to a receiver in stride (which somehow always feels like defying the natural disorder of the universe); the leveraging of momentum and the violent (non-concussive) collisions like a spectacular physics lesson; the self-mutilation of a defense by its own design initiated by a manipulating quarterback; the explosion that occurs at the point of attack when a linebacker avoids two blocks and beats a running back as if bursting from a wormhole.
After all, love is still the best verb the English language has to describe that feel of indescribable warmth and fondness, that having of ineffably positive emotion for something else. Because “intensely like” just doesn’t cut it. Words don’t do love justice — it’s a sound and smell and texture and warm colors that you experience in the fifth dimension that fill you with wonderful feelings not of the flesh. I want to share sunsets with football, and I want to buy football flowers and chocolate. I want to pick up a guitar and strum G, D, and A-minor chords to football while poetically telling it how special it is. So, in a non-romantic and nonsexual way (I think, anyway), I love football.
Because I love football and love Northeast Ohio,2 it necessarily follows that I love the Cleveland Browns, no matter how much suffering it’s wrought (and will likely continue to wring) on my life. It’s a torturous burden. But again, you know, the love thing.
So it brings me great pain to say that the organization devoted to the professional practice of football (which I love) and the entity that has the contractually-obligated exclusive participation of the Cleveland Browns (which I love) known as the National Football League, I hate. The opposite of love. Inverse affection. Intense distaste. Disgust. Plumes of rotten egg smelling toxic gas in traffic blocking out the sun while Justin Bieber’s “Baby” plays on the radio.
It’s awful, I know. Trust me, I wish it wasn’t like this. Football plus Cleveland Browns is supposed to be a double-love fudge sundae, but the National Football League (the NFL) is the anchovies on top. My level of distaste for the NFL didn’t appear overnight, but grew gradually (though it’s intensified recently). I think most readers would vehemently disagree with me, and I encourage them to do so. But I need to vent. I need to open a pressure valve. I need to explain myself. I need to elaborate on how I came to hate the NFL.3
Following the NFL continues to have less and less to do with football
It’s hard to convey how little I initially cared about the “deflated football scandal that I refuse to end with ‘-gate’” during its first six months.4 That Tom Brady probably took some liberties with his gamesmanship that may have given his team an unfair advantage in a game they won 45-7 is hardly worth my indignation. If deflating balls is a major concern of the NFL’s — which it apparently wasn’t before February 2015 — don’t let the teams handle the balls. If the Patriots had such a decisive advantage from a less resilient bladder wall, then it’s something the referees ought to have noticed handling the ball every play, wouldn’t you think?
The lawyer in me hasn’t been this aroused since the first time I saw A Few Good Men
The lawyer in me hasn’t been this aroused since the first time I saw A Few Good Men
I only started to care about The Great Ball Fondling of 2015 in the past 72 hours or so when I contemplated writing this post. It was actually more interesting than I thought: how the Wells Report piled inference upon inference upon Tom Brady and the Patriots without convincing proof of guilt, how the NFL attorneys mischaracterized what was in the Wells Report about Brady’s guilt, about how Ted Wells doesn’t know the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, about how Brady’s punishment eventually became based more on a theory on spoliation than one about football, and how Brady was convicted in the court of public opinion for “destroying” a cell phone that he was told the NFL didn’t need and for following the advice of his lawyer, just for starters.5 The lawyer in me hasn’t been this aroused since the first time I saw A Few Good Men.
How did this happen? How on earth has The Brady Ball Trial been going on so long? Shouldn’t this have been resolved with a hefty fine and a rule change before Valentine’s Day? When did following the NFL become more about the nuances of due process of law than football?
Because the NFL so thoroughly botched the handling of this Brady ball business, it’s not going to go away. It’s going to last all season and probably into the offseason. It. Just. Won’t. Die. By the way, I have spent my entire adult life vehemently rooting against Tom Brady on the football field, and the NFL managed to: 1) Turn Brady into a sympathetic figure with this bizarre public persecution; and 2) Give extra motivation to Brady just after he probably exhausted most of his remaining motivation winning his fourth Super Bowl. [Insert slow clap gif.]
One can only compartmentalize the football from the series of controversies and nonsense so much. You would need to mute your television at all times, never go on the internet, and wear earmuffs anytime you left the quiet, Deflategate-free safety of your own home. Before reading a single thing about the the deflated ball scandal,6 I already knew all but the finer details of the controversy through osmosis. It seeped into my pores through the air that’s saturated with the toxic fumes of it — just like it was with Ray Rice, the referees strike, the Saints bounty scandal, Adrian Peterson, Richie Incognito, Marshawn Lynch, Aldon Smith, and many other things.
The NFL punishment system is arbitrary and nonsensical
This a corollary to the “Roger Goodell is a clown” line of reasoning. There is no logic to the NFL’s punishment system. Unfortunately, for this reason, no team in the NFL can ignore the Great Ball Fondling. Most people could appreciate the hilarity in the disproportional punishment given to Ray Rice for what transpired in that Atlantic City elevator versus that given to Josh Gordon for his use of recreational substances. Both were punishments for off-field conduct, but all the joints in a Boulder, Colorado dorm aren’t worth a more severe punishment than what was shown on those distasteful elevator videos from last year.
The last few years have proven that the NFL’s discipline scheme is basically a random punishment generator. The league doesn’t even know what balance it’s trying to strike between fairness and deterrence, law and order, and enforcement of football and non-football behavior, let alone how to strike that balance. Instead, a team can give the league a not-so-anonymous tip, scare up an inquisition, and watch one of its rivals lose player games and draft picks for something that other elite quarterbacks do, as shown by this latest scandal. But this might not be a problem for your franchise if your owner is golf buddies with Roger Goodell.7 Grab your clubs, Jimmy, and get out on that golf course — I hope you like silly pants and losing on purpose.
Half the games are decided by random penalties that wildly swing game outcomes
Here’s another problem that’s become increasingly worse in recent years. Every sport has a penalty scheme that’s meant to maintain the competitive integrity and watchability of the game. Basketball without fouls would have less to do with shooting and more to do with chokeholds, and football without penalties would be like a scene from Spartacus. All sports suffer — if you want to view it as a flaw of the game — from decisive penalties.
But the consequences of borderline or downright bad calls in the NFL have compromised players’ abilities to decide games absent the blessing of the referees. This is particularly true with roughing the passer penalties (where touching a quarterback has become a high-risk proposition) and pass interference/holding/illegal contact penalties (where even incidental contact past five yards gives a team a new set of downs … when the refs feel like it). The penalty problem is exacerbated in the NFL because so many games come down to a handful of plays in the fourth quarter, and because there are so few games that one single penalty can have an extraordinary impact on a team’s season.
How many games have the Browns lost in part due to inexplicable penalties in the past few seasons? The roughing the passer on Paul Kruger against the Colts last season for doing exactly what he’s paid to do8 and the pass interference against Leon McFadden when the Browns played the Patriots in 2013 (both shown below) come to mind. There are many more.
The Browns have also benefited from — if not poorly called — unsatisfying penalties. The offensive pass interference on fourth down on Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans last season cost the Buccaneers a chance to come back against the Browns. No one wants to win a game because of an iffy roughing the passer call. The arbitrary dispersal of penalties in the NFL has gotten out of hand. It’s compromising the credibility of the game, taking the fun out of wins, and pouring salt in the wounds of losses.
Fantasy football is stupid
This will probably be the least popular opinion in this post. People obsess over fantasy football. They argue about it, they agonize over it, they live vicariously through it. There’s a very funny show on FX ostensibly based on it — the “it” being the unstoppable phenomenon known as fantasy football.
But here’s the thing: it’s not very fun. At least it’s not fun on its own. I played fantasy football for probably over a dozen years before I retired this offseason. I enjoyed it for long stretches — or at least I thought I did at the time. Last year, the highlight of my season was the time I was excited to have The Crow on my team, and that excitement lasted for all of two weeks.
But let’s think about it. We’ve all had that fantasy football season where our team goes 12-2, only to lose in the playoffs because two of our best players were benched by their teams that had locked up up playoff berths and had no incentive to play. All that hard work to lose in week 17 because of something you had no control of whatsoever. What about that Monday night game between the Vikings and Jaguars you stayed up late for just because Kyle Rudolph is on your fantasy team? You’re yelling, “Throw it to Rudolph throw it to RU-Dolph throwittoRUDOLPH!” at the TV because your down six points you know you’ll never accumulate. Your fantasy football team is full of disparate incentives that never align with yours. It’s very silly.
Everything looks stupid in hindsight in fantasy football
Everything looks stupid in hindsight in fantasy football
I won’t endorse any illegal activity or anything of the sort, but fantasy football seems especially stupid once you realize that there are, uhh, alternative ways to create a personal interest in individual games that don’t feature your team. And unlike your fantasy team, you’re not married to that individual player on that individual team all season because your league’s draft program randomly gave you a crummy pick position in your snake draft.
I do know people who are religious about fantasy football because it’s become an important camaraderie thing, or excuse to remain in touch with friends that have scattered all over the country. They have elaborate bets and the greatest motivation to succeed in their leagues is a desire to avoid humiliation. I respect that. My theory is that fantasy football draws people together because everyone is an equally potential target for ridicule: everything looks stupid in hindsight in fantasy football. (Remember the year you took Maurice Jones-Drew with your first pick and he had 400 yards and two touchdowns? Yeah, me too.)
It wouldn’t be so bad if fantasy football wasn’t a central part of NFL coverage and conversations about professional football — but that’s the case these days. If what keeps you doing it is the camaraderie and the role it plays in your friendships, I wholeheartedly support you. But in any event, I suggest you switch to a picks league of some sort and thank me later. Because fantasy football is stupid.
Most “analysts” covering the NFL are awful
Granted, the problem du jour with our society is that our media outlets don’t adequately inform us and we don’t demand enough from them from an entertainment and sophistication standpoint. It’s especially bad in the NFL. I can’t take another former player sitting on a studio set talking about how, “You cannot win with that attitude in the Nat-ion-al Foot-ball League.” The acronym NFL doesn’t adequately convey the prestige of the sacred institution, so analysts often use the full name of the league with an extra five-to-eight syllables of enunciation.
I’ll even give ESPN credit for NFL Matchup. All flaws of Merrill Hoge and Ron Jaworski aside, it’s a show about watching film — you know, real football! I’ll then criticize ESPN for shoving its most intelligent football show in the 7:30 a.m. ET time slot before five mindless hours of SportsCenter and NFL Countdown.9 But whatever.
The beauty of modern media is that we can largely avoid the mass media outlets consistently appealing to the lowest common denominator. The folks at ProFootballFocus and Football Outsiders, as well as individuals like Bill Barnwell at Grantland and Joe here at WFNY try and give us novel observations through statistics or film studies. Encourage them. Watch them. Read them. And demand that lazy analysts on larger media outlets stop insulting your intelligence.
The NFL is a shamelessly commercial enterprise
I know, I know: “Welcome to America, buddy!” This seems to be a pretty weak reason to abandon the NFL. I have a pretty high threshold for commercialism, living in 21st century America, but it’s just become too much: the NFL has overwhelmed my capacity for relentless advertising.
It’s hard to say when the constant deluge of product promotions broke my spirit; probably in the midst of one of those charming time out-commercial break-touchdown requiring lengthy review-commercial break-PAT-commercial break-kickoff-commerical break sequences. When did the post-kickoff commercial break become acceptable and why did we as fans not protest? The league and its broadcasting affiliates just snuck it in there, and we collectively shrugged our shoulders.
I have a pretty high threshold for commercialism, living in 21st century America, but it’s just become too much
I have a pretty high threshold for commercialism, living in 21st century America, but it’s just become too much
Then there’s the Super Bowl, which the NFL has somehow tricked people into watching for the commercials! That’s like going on vacation for the presentation where they try to sell you a timeshare.
It’s not just the volume of commercials, but the occasionally nauseating form that these revenue-generating promotions take. Perhaps you didn’t hear about the money the Department of Defense paying NFL teams (including the Cleveland Browns) to have in-game ceremonies involving the U.S. military during games.10 Those heartwarming mid-game pep rallies of patriotism were paid for with taxpayer money and nestled between commercial breaks for insurance companies and soft drinks. Although a military pageant funded with taxpayer money in a stadium built with taxpayer money at a sporting event for a tax-exempt league is pretty meta.11
What about pink month, when the league requires that players wear a bunch of pink shit, pledging all the proceeds from pink merchandise to fighting breast cancer that, after some convenient accounting tricks, amount to a small percentage of revenue actually going to cancer research.12 Sure, giving any money to charity is always commendable. So giving some is better than giving none. But the NFL clearly uses cancer awareness to sell pink merchandise and appeal to female fans while giving a nominal percentage to charity. “Look, we care about women, we really care!”
The aura of commercialism is hurting the spirit of the game as well. It leads to a sterile, plastic atmosphere, that’s reflected in everything from bland, cookie-cutter stadiums (the majority of them) to the broadcasts.13 It’s all tailored to sell stuff.
Again, I’ve no quarrel with players, owners, and leagues profiting off of sports — that motive keeps the whole thing going. The NFL’s goal of making money is no more offensive than what goes on in the NCAA. But I’m more conscious that I’m watching a product during NFL games than I am of any other sport. I would have a lot more fun watching football games if they didn’t feel so much like three-and-a-half hour commercials for light beer and pickup trucks.
The NFL allowed Art Modell to move the Cleveland Browns
This goes without saying. Let’s not relive all the gory details, but suffice to say it’s not helping the NFL’s case to win favor with me or other fans of underdog franchises. Lost in the Modell/Cleveland saga is that the NFL sat there with its hand in its pockets as he absconded with a region’s most treasured possession.14
A league should do whatever it can to avoid letting an owner move one of its signature franchises, and the league should have intervened to at least make sure things were done the right way. Professional football without the Cleveland Browns just seems … wrong. Yet that’s what happened for a short period for the end of the ’90s. It’s embarrassing and shameful for the league, and Northeast Ohio suffered the indignity of having their team taken no apparent reason. It also increased perpetually lent credence to threats of other franchises to move teams for lack of public funding, allowing billionaires to leverage cities for more money. But that’s just a bonus to what should have been a bleak episode for the league that most people outside Northeast Ohio didn’t care about.
The NFL currently lacks the self-awareness to change for the better
The league has become so cold and calculated and preoccupied with its exorbitant profits that football has become servient to the league’s rapacious profit motive. Furthermore, the NFL is steadfast in its refusal to have a come-to-Jesus moment about the brain injury issue that’s threatening the future of the game. It’s willfully ignorant, such as when its supposedly independent Hall of Fame15 decided deceased players shouldn’t receive the same dignities as other players at their Hall of Fame enshrinement, probably because the NFL and the Hall are squeamish about the startling sight of someone’s daughter or widow talking onstage, shocking viewers into reconciling with the fact that the player died from a lasting brain injury.
Even though the brain injury problem is something that will likely drastically alter the future of what football looks like, the league has been unwilling to be intellectually honest about the matter. There are ways to improve professional football that are sensible to most people — but the NFL isn’t run by people. It’s run by politicians and possibly a robot.
A lot of my complaints will probably remain unrectified as long as the NFL keeps making making more money than several large countries. Which is shame. Because I love football, and I love the Browns. It’s too bad that my enjoyment of them is spoiled by something I’ve grown to hate.
- It’s almost certainly not the first, neither. [↩]
- You’ll just have to take the latter as a given. [↩]
- This is about to become a lot of bloviating. I apologize in advance. I understand that nearly all of the criticisms I am about to share apply equally to nearly every sport and league devoted to sports that I enjoy. The NCAA is a corrupt, criminal organization polluting college athletics, and NBA games are largely decided by the arbitrary allotting of free throws by officials who are biased at best and fixing games (at least as recently as this century) at worst. I’m going to try to make this as much about the NFL as possible, without trying to preemptively argue against every “College football is so much worse at X,” and “The NBA is only marginally better at Y” line of thinking. Again, this is just one silly man’s opinion. [↩]
- The suffix -gate needs to be officially shelved until there is a national scandal involving a fencing company — which would give us “Gategate” — or there is a scandal involving the documentation or historical remembrance of the scandal that resulted in president Richard Nixon’s resignation — giving us the deliciously meta “Watergategate.” [↩]
- You can find evidence of all these things on SI, Above the Law, the Washington Post, and Stephanie Stradley’s website or Twitter feed. Stephanie Stradley is a lawyer and Texans fan who has done a fantastic job of picking apart the problems and complications of this entire controversy. [↩]
- Other than Craig’s post about the deflated balls and common sense in JANUARY, just to really bring home how long this madness has been going on. [↩]
- That Don Van Natta, Jr. piece from last year about the Ray Rice scandal is a great, hilarious reread. [↩]
- Craig is still smarting over this penalty. [↩]
- Oh, it’s also on at 3 a.m. ET for the nocturnal folks on the East Coast. [↩]
- According to that report, the Browns received modest (compared to some other teams) sums from the U.S. Air Force, leaving open the possibility that most of those ceremonies are genuine and aren’t funded by the DoD. [↩]
- To be fair, the NFL did forfeit its tax-exempt status this year. [↩]
- It appears there is some confusion over the actual percentage of revenue or profits go to charity. It’s not 100 percent. [↩]
- Steve Beuerlein seems like a nice guy and all, but is anyone excited to listen to him announce a game? [↩]
- The NBA allowed this to happen with Seattle as well. [↩]
- The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s alleged independence from the NFL is farcical. [↩]
23 Comments
Ditch the Four Letter coverage for the NFL Network, and things will get better.
I agree with everything except fantasy football being stupid. I personally love it because it allows me to follow players I might not otherwise have never known about while competing.
As far as the sport goes it’s awesome but I’m with Kyle the league is not. I stand by my feeling on Goodell I think he’s been horrible. I also think the NFL has given itself more black eyes by missteps then probably any other league but because it’s so big and such a cash cow it hasn’t felt the pain. Well that is until Tom Brady gets done with them. Just wait. People will see just how shady the NFL can be especially Mr. Goodell and at the end of the day they will rue making what should have been a $25,000 fine into way more then was necessary.
Worst game day coverage regardless of the sport. They are by far the worst for NBA but MLB and NFL are gaining ground. It really is a shame what has happened to that network. Instead of competition making them better it’s made them worse.
NFL Network is terrible, they are never critical of players, teams or anything the league does because they have skin in the game. It is like listening to the Browns Insider which is wholly owned by the Browns. Never get your news from the mouthpiece of the organization you are trying to learn about.
I didn’t say it was great. Just better than the Four Letter.
Tom Jackson should be embarrassed sitting at the table with those buffoons.
NFL Red Zone is a gift from God.
I haven’t watched much of Fox’s NFL coverage, but I do like Jay Glazer.
Fox is very entertaining, not so great with analysis and it is extremely slated to the NFC for obvious reasons. But they make me laugh just about every week with good humor and good-natured banter between the personalities.
I’m thankful for the two national networks in Fox and CBS. I’m lucky I also have NFL Network but I’ll be honest I don’t watch it a lot. If the NFL ever tries to make it’s network the sole host, I don’t think they will, they’ll lost a lot of people including me.
Fantasy football is pretty much the same as any other type of gambling. You can make some decisions which will slightly impact what happens (and if you’re like me you make awesome decisions and win your league!). But for the most part, it’s entirely random.
Most analysts are terrible. Dilfer (pictured) isn’t one of the worst though. At first, I hated him, but beyond his cocky delivery, I’ve grown to really appreciate his knowledge.
He does still look like a talking phallus head, but I digress. (Seriously, somebody should put a black censor bar over his face when he talks)
I don’t much care for the NFL network, either.
Shannon Sharpe makes me want to off myself – all I can do not to karate kick the telly at the sound of that voice. It’s kind of breathtaking that the NBA shows with Barkley and Shaq are Mensa Jeopardy compared to the toothless trailer park vaudeville of Fox’s NFL shows. It’s like the producers feed them intentionally unfunny things to say with strict instructions that all others hoot and holler in response, the louder the better. And surely they slip barbiturates to every ex-head coach who appears on set during his hiatus year. I’m getting aggravated just thinking about it – it’s so bad you can’t even enjoy it ironically.
He has his moments. He’s not the worst. That comment though … .
If you and your friends do cool things like that, then I get it. My friends and I were not. But I would disagree with you, if you play individual games you’re not beholden to the randomness of who scores, and it’s often a temporary, three-hour commitment. A bad fantasy team lasts 17 weeks.
Agree. Once I examined my motives and realized that I really only hated him because of the graceless things that he said about the Browns after he left (all true, by the way), I grew to appreciate his analysis. The fact that he also plays the “loudest guy in the room” act is still irritating, but that’s just the tenor of NFL coverage. Far from being one of the worst, he’s now one of my favorites (that is to say, one of the few guys I can watch or listen to for more than 15 seconds).
Ha, yep SS makes us all dumber for having witnessed whatever was spouted in Daffy Duck like eloquence.
The network’s presumably desired reaction: We are happy watching guys laughing and clowning.
My reaction: Paralyzing fear like standing next to a schizo on a street corner who’s muttering to himself and screaming at random passers by.
Also, imagine what must be going through Terry Bradshaw’s head when he’s randomly laughing. Imagining a monkey butler bringing him a drink? Polar bear in a tutu riding a unicyle?
Er… Isn’t Shannon on CBS?
Fox has: Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson, Curt Meneffee (sp?) and Howie Long.
I am pretty sure Terry’s random laugh moments are later handed over to the writers of Family Guy’s odd flashback sequences.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like NCAA is gaining popularity and NFL is becoming worse. Kyle made some great points here.
so you consider them different shows? Interesting.
funny
The NCAA has plenty of its own problems. But I just enjoy it much much more on an “any random game” basis. It’s just a more pleasant experience in my opinion.
I love football. I’m pretty much over the Browns. And I hate the NFL.
And fantasy football is by far the least enjoyable major fantasy sport (behind baseball & basketball).
Nailed it. And if you read the history, the NFL has always had it in for the Browns, starting with their first game in the league. When they came over from the AAFC, the NFL scheduled them on the road at night against the two-time defending champs (which the Browns annihilated). They refuse to recognize the AAFC records, including Cleveland’s undefeated 1948 season. They practically ignore Paul Brown, who won seven pro titles, founded two franchises and integrated the sport. After The Move was announced, the next game was in Pittsburgh, and even Steeler fans were pissed and protested before and during the game. But the NFL orchestrated a whitewash, and on TV there was nary a mention of the move and tight player shots all night. When the team came back in 1999, the Ravens should have been banished to the AFC South. Instead the league stuck us with them, as if there were some kind of “rivalry” with Baltimore, instead of the personal affront that each game against those preening jackasses is for longtime Browns fans. Beyond the Browns, that league of frauds and crooks can get bent.