Super Bowl Preview

Alex: I’m still a little sour from the Patriots premature exit from the playoffs, so it’s been hard for me to get amped up for the game. That being said, fans of the sport have plenty to look forward to: two historic organizations, Dallas’s beautiful stadium, and perhaps the last game we’ll see in a while. At the beginning of the season, like the rest of the TNIB staff, I picked the Packers to win the Super Bowl, so I have to stick with them here, I’m thinking to the tune of 35-27 and I predict this will be the game that we remember Aaron Rodgers for at the end of his career. I also predict Alex Smith is sitting at home praying that during the game nobody mentions the time the Niners picked him number one while Rodgers fell into the 20s.

Patrick: I’m sticking with the Packers here. That will make my preseason prediction of a Packers Super Bowl win look pretty good, which I need because, like the rest of the TNIB staff, I was crazy wrong about the AFC. Here’s my prediction: Aaron Rodgers will throw for one million passing yards (give or take a few) and will have two rushing TDs to accompany his 23 passing TDs. Those number work out, right? He’ll also throw one interception, but he’ll do it on purpose. Rodgers will throw a pass directly at James Harrison so he can tackle Harrison and put on his wrestling title belt. 

The Packers will win by a score of 175-7. The Steelers lone TD will be a defensive touchdown scored on a fumble caused, recovered, and returned by Troy Polamalu because even though the Packers will win, Polamalu will always win the hair battle, no matter how glorious Clay Matthews’s hair might be.

Walt: The Packers are pretty much a lock for the “moral” victory award, but I think that’ll have to keep them warm during the cold, snowy Dallas night, because to the surprise of absolutely no one I’m picking the Steelers. Mostly out of pure homerism, but I’m also doing it because, dammit, I wasn’t at TNIB for the beginning-of-season picks and SOMEBODY needs to bring a little variety to these proceedings. Predictions: Pittsburgh will get off to a slow start when the entire O-line injures themselves during the coin toss, but receive a lucky break when Harrison decapitates Rodgers in the second quarter. He’ll be charged the first-ever on-field multi-million-dollar fine, which he’ll pay with spare change from his son’s piggy bank.

The Steelers will oversleep during their halftime nap and miss the third quarter completely, but hold Green Bay off and pull it out at the last second when Randle El completes the gadget play everyone’s been waiting for him to throw all season long. Pittsburgh takes it, 24-17, which everyone will complain about until Roethlisberger single-handedly prevents a lock-out and saves the next season, thereby making him a good person again in the eyes of the world.

Ian: Go Pack Go. Like Alex, I’m still sour from the Patriots’ loss, but the Packers have been my second favorite team since they jettisoned Bart Farve. I hadn’t been super-excited about the game, but Lil’ Wayne’s new freestyle called “Green and Yellow” actually got me pumped up (at least more than the Super Bowl Shuffle would have) and so now I’m ready.

As for the actual game, I can’t see the Steelers’ offensive line, especially without Maurkice Pouncey, holding back the front seven of Green Bay, especially B.J. Raji and Clay Matthews who may be the two best players in the NFL at their respective positions. Roethlisberger may be able to make things happen when his protection fails, but it’s likely that he’ll be so hassled that the Steelers won’t be able to do much on offense. On the other side of the ball, the Packers have so many weapons that they’re tough for any defense to stop, and with the emergence of James “Heart like John” Starks it’s tough to look past them for this game.

*Image courtesy of We’ll Never Forget You Brent

One and Done (or, Why That Other Sports Blog is Wrong)

Big Daddy Drew over at Kissing Suzy Kolber has a great post looking at why the NFL just happens to kick so much ass in television ratings. The main thrust of the argument comes down to “event mentality,” which he chalks up to the fact that people think of long-standing networks as somehow more authoritative:

Part of it is that “event television” mentality, an elusive concept that so many TV execs spend their four-hour workdays trying to capture. Simmons has long made a point of distinguishing play-by-play announcers by whether or not you feel like you’re watching a big-time sporting event. And it’s the same way with networks for me. If I’m watching the AFC title game on CBS, part of my brain believes there are a zillion other people out there watching it at the same time. Football fans. Casual fans. Young people. Old people. Rich dickhead people. Poor people. It makes me feel a little less lonely, even though that’s a complete illusion and the reality is that I’m a loser with two kids and no friends who’s watching the game by himself because he has nowhere else to watch it. But that self-delusion matters. If I’m watching the exact same game, and it’s airing on HGTV or something, that feeling is gone. Regardless of whether or not the game drew more viewers on cable. It’s a prejudice. It’s the world’s least meaningful prejudice, but it’s still there.

It’s an interesting argument, but I think Drew kind of sidles up to the truth and then takes off in the wrong direction. “Event mentality” is certainly the key to the NFL’s ratings, but it’s not primarily derived from network nostalgia. What it really comes down to is scarcity: there’s less football to watch, so naturally people watch more of it.

Part of it is sheer numbers: football’s once a week, and it’s all more or less grouped around one day, which most people in America have off and thus will spend looking for an excuse to sit around and drink beer. That’s not really the case with baseball, basketball, hockey, or what have you: I can watch the Pirates lose almost every day of the week, so chances are good I won’t be watching said loss at the same time as lots of other people. (And certainly not more people than are tuning into, say, “Two and a Half Men,” which has the same one-day-a-week edge that football does.) So, football is already pre-packaged with an event mentality: it’s all on one day, therefore said day is an Event.

But it goes deeper than that, too: the scarcity of football means that every game really, truly, honest-to-God matters. When you watch a football game, most of the time you’re going to see one team move up in the standings and the other team move down —as an immediate consequence of that game. Other sports don’t have that: their fluctuations tend to be a bit more curved and nuanced, and are most easily seen cumulatively after the fact.

This is most true during the post-season: you lose, you’re out. That’s it. Period. End of story. I was at the AFC Championship game on Sunday, and I can tell you that the second half of that game was one long, miserable stomach-churn, as I slowly watched the Steelers trickle away their chance at the Super Bowl. And not in a best-out-of-seven, “We’ll get ‘em next game” kind of way. Up until that last time-killing pass, the tension in the stadium was utterly palpable, and it was that way precisely because this was the Only Chance the Steelers had. (Luckily, they took it, which made the five degree weather and 7:00 a.m. flight back to Boston the next morning tolerable.)

So of course lots of people tune in to football games. They don’t want to miss anything. I can skip Game Three of the World Series and know, with complete mathematical certainty, that I won’t be missing the crowning of a new championship team. The only time you get stakes like that is in Game Seven, and no series is guaranteed to come to that. When it does, the ratings are higher, but they still don’t match football’s because there’s been a sort of dilution taking effect. Sure, for fans of the sport, a best-of-seven series can be thrilling at all times, and is arguably a much more fair representation of who the better team is. But it doesn’t really make for must-see-TV, especially when “Chuck” is on. And the networks have just about nothing to do with it.

The Poignant Pause

There was an interesting moment back in Week 13 that I was reminded of recently. On the first drive of the game, Ben Roethlisberger, already stumbling around on a broken foot, got punched in the face by the Ravens’ Haloti Ngata. The punch knocked Roethlisberger’s nose out of alignment, but he rubbed the proverbial dirt in it, took a lap, and played the rest of the game, eventually leading the Steelers to victory. It was the kind of gritty, tough, who-gives-a-crap performance that just begs to be commented on, and Chris Collinsworth stepped up to put it all in context for the Sunday Night viewing public.

 “Say what you want about Roethlisberger…” Collinsworth began. And then paused. It was a short, two-second pause, but one that was quite noticeable in a setting where the goal is to maintain a constant level of patter. Finally, he continued: “I mean, call him a drama queen if you want. But what he’s doing tonight takes real heart.”

I sat up a bit in my seat. “Drama queen?” Did he seriously just say “Drama queen?” Ridiculous. Nobody, given the chance to “say what they want” about Roethlisberger, would ever say that he’s a drama queen. He barely ever talks to the press. He rarely, if ever, complains. He’s had more concussions than most people have had cavities, and he once stopped an oncoming car with his face. “Drama” is not Roethlisberger’s problem.

“Alleged sexual assault,” on the other hand, is most certainly his problem. But then that would have been a harder topic for Collinsworth to make a sound bite of.  “Y’know, say what you want about Roethlisberger, Al, and stay out of night club bathrooms with him, but boy howdy! In football, as in life, he just doesn’t take no for an answer!” Not quite as nice of a sentiment. So, Collinsworth stopped, mid-sentence, knowing that he’d set himself up for danger, and decided to soft-ball it with the random “drama queen” remark. A bit of an awkward move, sure. But what could he do? Sexual assault, and sex in general, does not fit into The Narrative.

Announcer-wise, there are two major types of Narrative that a star player can go through when he has legal trouble: the Redemption and the Downfall. The tropes are well known; you can probably recite them by heart, and commentators live off of them. But when sex gets brought in, things get interesting. How do you pull off a Redemption narrative when, every time you talk about it, you have to remind viewers that the guy whose passer rating you’re praising is, in fact, kind of gross? And not in, like, a drug-abuse or nightclub-fighting way. I mean a really oogie way. How do you talk about that?

The answer is simple: you don’t. You ignore it, you skirt its edges, and if you absolutely have to address it, you use the vaguest language possible. You speak of the player’s “off-field troubles,” or reference his “difficulties” in the off-season. And eventually, gradually, you pave over the problem with Narrative. Then, next season, you can pretend like it never happened. (See: Vick, Michael.)

The key to all of this is misdirection. But misdirection is getting harder and harder these days, what with the tweetsings and the Facespaces resulting in a sports-fandom that’s much more informed than before. It makes it tough on announcers looking for ways around a topic. Somewhere in their lizard brains, most of them are probably thanking their respective deities that Brett Favre got so beat up this year, because it means we can talk about his Downfall without also having to mention his unfortunate taste in footwear. What would they have talked about if he’d actually been good this season?

Of course, the obfuscation of The Narrative is not an evil or amoral thing. It’s just a thing that needs to happen for TV sports to work. It keeps us from thinking too deeply about the guys playing the game that we love, as we cheer them from our living rooms. They’re not real people, after all: they’re cardboard characters inhabiting a fantasy world of physical prowess, and we can tune in to watch them kick the crap out of each other weekly. And that’s fine. We can be inspired or saddened by whatever Narratives we’re being fed, and everyone who knows the backstory can also chuckle as we watch guys like Collinsworth tap dance through the minefield of icky sex stuff. It’s a win-win!

But, of course, Narratives have ties to real life. Behind the cardboard cutouts are real people, icky and skeezy and otherwise. I was reminded of the Week 13 “Drama Queen” moment when the news broke about Roethlisberger’s hush-hush-but-no-really-you-guys engagement to a girl who, we can all hope, was treated to a safe, sophisticated, and nuanced courtship. (Print media, it will be noticed, can talk a little more easily about the sex stuff. The written word is a distancing tool.) The news reminded me of Collinsworth’s split-second hesitation, because as far as the NFL is concerned, Roethlisberger’s engagement is the culmination of Roethlisberger’s Narrative, and just in time for the postseason, too. Big Ben has finally Triumphed Over Adversity, Turned His Life Around, and can now head into the playoffs with announcers discussing his impending nuptials instead of possible court proceedings.

I seriously hope that, in this case, the Narrative turnaround is a personal one, too. I really hope Roethlisberger goes on to a saintly life of both physical and ethical achievement. As a Steelers fan, who has happily been cheering the team all season, I want nothing more. Because if he manages to pull that off, that holiest of holies, that True Narrative Turnaround, then that means soon I’ll be able to wholeheartedly support my beloved team without being subtly reminded of just what made Collinsworth pause every time Big Ben shakes off a defender and stays alive in the pocket.

*Photo courtesy of Joey Gannon via Creative Commons license

There’s No “I” in “Introduction”

No doubt impressed by my 0-4 record in fantasy football (team motto: “What’s the worst that can happen?”) and my well-documented devotion to the best minor league team in major league baseball, Patrick has been gracious enough to invite me to write for this fantastic blog, which I’ve been following for a while and shall now cheerfully run into the ground. Get excited, folks!