(NOTE: This remains a Yankee blog. But the only NY Times story thus far in 2018 concerns "safety nets" - not the bullpen safety net of Chad Green and David Robertson, but actual safety nets, as in metal and twine. Until something happens, or the Times awakens, we must spread our filth upon other deserving subjects.)
I'm expecting some classic game-winning calls, such as:
1. The big run negated by "holding." Now and then, in the pass-happy NFL, something amazing happens: A runner breaks loose for 30 or 40 yards, sometimes a touchdown. It's a back-breaker for the defense, until some 400-pound offensive lineman is flagged for "holding." Instead of the big run, the offense is penalized 10-yards, and it's a back-breaker for the team that just scored. Incredible!
The best part comes on the video replay. The "color" announcer always spots the transgression and says, "Yep, that's a good call!" even when you see nothing... nothing! The beauty here is that on practically every play, somebody holds somebody else. They just get away with it, or the run gets stuffed, so the refs have no cause to throw a flag. When it's a big run, they step in and call everything back. It never ceases to delight the fans! Go, refs!
2. The game-ending "pass interference" call. Long ago, a great offensive strategy emerged for last-ditch scoring opportunities: The QB simply flings the ball into the end zone and hopes for pass interference. Forget catching the ball. Try to catch the flag. If the game is close, sometimes, the refs actually get to decide who wins and loses. For a fan, there is nothing more rewarding!
The beauty here is that the call can go either way. Sometimes, the ref won't throw a flag, even though a defender has almost sexually molested the wide receiver. The announcers will say, "The refs are letting them play, and that's how it should be!" On the next play, to even things out, the refs will flag an invisible bump, and the network voices will sing out, "Yes, that's definitely pass interference!"
The greatest pass interference calls - "P.I." for short - put the ball on the one-yard line, giving one team an easy field goal to win the game. Thus, an epic, bare-knuckled, four-hour battle is decided by one flag. Football doesn't get any better!
3. The ten-minute "Rodney King" instant replay review. Several times a game, the refs will halt everything and send a matter to "New York," where presumably teams of lawyers argue before an NFL Supreme Court. (Is the U.S. Supreme Court in on this?) This is especially rewarding for fans sitting in zero-degree weather, because it reminds them of their status as sideline props.
The best instant replays defy what everyone just saw - like the 1991 Rodney King police brutality video, played ceaselessly at various speeds until a jury cannot see the parking lot for the asphalt. At that point, the announcers say, "See? There's no question about it: He didn't have possession of the ball at the precise moment when it hit the ground; this will be overturned!" But then... get this: It might NOT be overturned! New York is gonna do whatever New York is gonna do, and God only knows what drugs the judges are doing.
The best moment: After they overturn a play, the refs require another 10-minute video delay to determine the new line of scrimmage. At home, I'm cheering at the top of my lungs! Greatest moments in reffing... coming this weekend! Let's all be there!
One last thing: We know which side will win. The New England Patriots, of course, always get the calls.
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My favorite part of the new "under review" ridiculousness is that, while the play is being reviewed in some dry-sack office in Manhattan, the ref on the field stands before a hooded monitor (emblazoned with Microsoft's tablet logo) and watches the replays.
Since the NFL has taken away the final say from the refs on the field, all the on-field official is doing is watching, just like us at home! His review of the replays carries as much weight as the guy who's sitting on the edge of his couch in his den trying to apply juuuust the right amount of pressure to scoop some guacamole on the chip, without actually breaking the chip. At that moment, I think the guy sitting in his den has the harder job.
Every time I see an official on the field doing this, I wonder out loud what he could be watching on that monitor. YouTube? FaceBook? PornHub? Match.com?
All he's got to do is move his mouth like Jerry Mahoney while the Paul Winchell's in the league offices tell him what to say. What gives?
And yet I continue to watch. Old habits die hard.
The modern NFL product is almost unwatchable to me. All the ads within possessions. All the penalties. The overwhelming importance of a single player (the quarterback and his passing) is just ridiculous. All the hot-dogging. The institutionalized abuse of the players with their reduced prospects for a healthy old age. The game has even corrupted our Universities which serve as an unsupported minor league system for the NFL, supplying fresh meat for the grinder and graduating "students", the vast majority having learned nothing. "Yup. I played football for Big State U. Came away with no money and no useful degree but did get a bum knee and brain damage."
It amuses me greatly when NFL fans tell me how boring baseball is. At least baseball, as slow as it can oftentimes be, is not burdened by officials declaring penalties after big moments. The rules in football are broken on every play and whether or not a flag is thrown just seems capricious. The game of football is in big trouble, no doubt about it.
I walked away from watching that "sport" a few years ago.
LBJ....actually the ref is more like Knucklehead Smith!....
https://youtu.be/tY0MWYfDO7Q
Great piece, Duque, and I agree with everything said here.
Yes, I still like watching some football around playoff time. But I am struck by how absolutely slow the game has become.
Baseball's pace has upped the average time of a game from about 2.5 hours to maybe 3, or 3.5, which is often too much. But football is now up to about 4 and counting, and—as you say—full of imposed play stoppages that are jammed with commercials.
They should get rid of video replay, period, in all sports. And I'm with KD: the use of colleges for NBA and NFL minor leagues is disgraceful.
But again, it's all about money. They won't get rid of either, because that will mean losing ads for the NFL, and the expense of the league having to build its own minor-league system.
Oh, and as Duque mentioned...yes, we have no Yankees in the NY Times sports pages.
There IS an article about how the Mets have signed Adrian Gonzalez, now officially equipped with his own, ridiculous nickname—"Agone."
The Times seems to feel the reason for "Agone's" spot on the roster is to "tutor" Dom Smith—"tutor" in this instance being synonymous with "replace."
Honestly, it's so sad to watch the hot stove league talks on the Mets' imitation YES Network, SNY, where they seriously discuss whether this 35-year-old with the bad back can or cannot replace the grossly overweight kid who can't field his position at first base. Are there any non-masochists who are still Mets fans?
But getting back to our epic contest, yes, we had no soccer, either, which leaves our total at Soccer 10, Yanks 1.
No reason to despair, though, The Times gave us another one of its truly breathtaking, "alternative sports" headlines today, which is: "Squash Champion Seeks Sublet."
I can barely imagine what the article itself is, and I won't actually be looking at it to find out.
Neither will anyone else, of course, save for assorted cockatoos, parakeets, and Pekinese throughout the greater metropolitan area.
My favorite is when they must review a play to see if it was a catch. Or was a touchdown. Did the ball break the plane of the goal-line before his knee touched, or was it just shy of the line? Did he bobble the ball when his second foot scraped the grass in-bounds or was it secured? Did the ball touch the ground, and aid in the catch, as the receiver rolled over and secure it to his belly, or was his hand ( or a finger ) under the ball the entire time?
We finally see a touchdown with our own eyes, only to have it reviewed for twenty minutes before the call on the field stands. It is pathetic. Fan interest turns to the spicy sausage and beer line. But in the interest of " getting it right," we have to put up with it. Oh, and it provides ad space ( " let's go to break while they review the tapes") for another $50 million of Ford Truck commercials, which we have already seen 60 times.
I wonder what would happen if they reviewed the old green Bay/Dallas championship game in which Jerry Kramer threw the key block. Holding? Knee down before the ball went over the goal line? Dallas wins?
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
It is a referee's game now. Win or lose.
It makes me understand why Mustang won't add football to his TV/radio schedule.
The only reason I used to watch football is the Giants. This year, that disappeared. There was a "pick all the winners for every game in the entire season" pool I was in for a long time. I won the jackpot one year, which is remarkable because I know nothing about any team outside of the Giants, and now I don't know who they trot out onto the field for bloodletting.
My rule for the Super Bowl is easy: if the Giants are in it, I'll watch at least some of it. If not, who cares? As the brain damage cases pile up, I really have no interest in the NFL. I don't watch boxing, either. And the NBA is another boring waste of time for me. When I was growing up, I was no doubt influenced by my father, who called pro basketball players "a bunch of pituitary cases." I've heard that hockey is a game played on ice involving sticks. I don't watch that, either.
Olympic curling is fine, though for the life of me I don't understand the strategies involved. Maybe I like it because I have a soft spot for bowling, another "wtf?" endeavor. Every Sunday morning was TV Tournament Time in the Albany area when I was a kid, hosted by Howard Tupper. Now, there was quality viewing.
But the NFL? Crap. Bloated. Interminable. Though I look forward to watching football fade in popularity in the years ahead. Except maybe in the South, where it's a fundamentalist religion.
May Tom Brady play until he's 65 and lead the Patriots to Super Bowl wins against every NFL team except the NY Giants. May the last word ever thought or uttered by Tom Brady be "Eli".
Another point...Pro football needs to widen the field, impose weight limits by position on players, and eliminate the 3 point stance, or it will suffer the fate of boxing within a generation.
Or to achieve what you want, Publius, go back to two-way football, which is what you had before WW II. Players will start to look like human beings again. Hell, go back to leather helmets—they'll stop using their heads as battering rams.
Alphonso, some idiot already slowed up that Kramer play—one of the great moments in my life—to "prove" that Kramer got off the line a fraction of a hair early. Jethro Pugh said he felt vindicated by that. Yeah, Pugh was a 6-6, 260-pound guy who got driven about four yards back into the end zone, and he feels vindicated.
Hell, apparently most of the players on the field thought that Donny Anderson had scored the play before. So today we would have had at least one and maybe two replays, twenty minutes of people standing around on their frostbitten toes, and about ten Ford truck commercials.
Then, all you had was drama.
WHEN I WAS A KID, I REMEMBER, A GUY HAD TO LAND IN THE END ZONE, WITH THE BALL, FOR A TD....
HIS WHOLE BODY, THAT'S RIGHT, HIS WHOLE BODY, HAD TO BE IN.
THEN THEY GOT CUTE AND STARTED THE "BREAK THE PLANE" BULLSHIT, AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN THE SAME.
...AND I HATE THAT FUCKING PYLON.
THEY DIVE AT IT, THE REACH FOR IT, THEY PRACTICALLY THROW THE BALL AT IT SOMETIMES.
IN MY MIND, THE BODY IS STILL NOT IN THE END ZONE.
BASEBALL RULES.
YANKEES RULE.
Indeed, ALL-CAPS!
I find it weird that we no longer know what a catch is—at least, when the New England Patriots play. You have to control the ball all the way down, or some such? Weird.
I HEAR YA HOSS...
"SURVIVING THE GROUND"...
SUCH BULLSHIT.
Remarkably prescient. Well done, el duque.
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