And so goes another Super Bowl, another ratings-dominating event that pretty much exemplifies the superiority the National Football League has over all the other sports in the United States. After weeks of Deflategate, weeks of discussing who might win, whose legacy will improve, which team wants it more, we got our main event. It didn’t disappoint. We got close plays, awesome plays, controversial calls, and a wild finish. It was everything sports fans wanted, and it was the lucid dream come true for your most avid of football fans.
And the fun part is that with another close game, the NFL is immediately forgiven for everything. The botching of several cases, the uninspired fight against concussions, the blackballing, the mismanagement of suspensions, and the culture of the game gearing heavily towards offense and quarterbacks. All of this is forgotten because the NFL clouded all of the bad news with drama concerning the game, and will continue to invade the airwaves with the reaction to the game. The NFL will forever remain ahead of the competition no matter how faulty or weak the final product is because of one main reason:
The NFL is really a television show, a drama at that.
Football (college and pro) has mastered the technique of being 90% anticipation, and 10% actual content. With a shorter schedule, fewer games, and more time between games for everyone to panic, for everyone to nitpick, and for stupid nonsense to pop up, there’s always a story happening in the NFL---and most of the time has little to do with the actual game. Potential and woulda’ coulda’ shoulda’s replaces the talk of the actual results. And when the games get boring (especially the pitiful Monday and Thursday night games that happened in 2014), BOOM there’s a random scandal. Roger Goodell doesn’t mind botching things, because it gets the ball rolling, gets the people talking, and does indeed produce millions of more dollars. On a moral sense, the commissioner has gotten plenty wrong. From a financial standpoint however, the shield is just as strong as ever. The drama is strong, and the ratings will reward that.
Is it just coincidence that despite the NFL being hailed as the #1 sport, its mediocre Sunday night games are being outperformed by another drama known as Walking Dead? The superior drama sells.
To have a successful show, you need characters, you need people to love and people to hate. Enter the movement of quarterbacks becoming the cornerstone and most vital piece to a good football team. The team has a face. This is why the NHL can never get the ratings, all the faces are hiding behind masks and helmets. This is why basketball is easier to market, and why it loves recognizable people like Michael Jordan and LeBron James as opposed to full teams like the Hawks and Spurs. This is why despite baseball always providing better product (Do you EVER question a World Series champ? And this season’s Super Bowl featured two teams that should not have been there in the first place. See how easy it is to forget? It was supposed to be Ravens/Packers if it weren’t for a few miracles) cannot really deliver those ratings.
The NFL is willing to water down the product for those ratings. It’s not like baseball where there are hundreds of ways to create a good team that can go all the way (For some hilarity, look up the World Series-winning Gashouse Gang of 1934). Defense doesn’t win championships anymore. A great running game won’t win it. A team with dozens of clever tricks up its sleeve (Dolphins’ Wildcat style from seemingly decades ago) won’t do it. In this league, the quarterback is pretty much required. Look at the Arizona Cardinals: despite defense winning their games the millisecond their Carson Palmer went down, the season disappeared too.
In each Super Bowl, there needs to be a villain, and there needs to be a hero. What if both teams have a lot of hate? Then make one a worse villain. Enter Deflategate. The NFL was depending on one (or both) Golden Boys to reach the Super Bowl (Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers) and their teams failed. The hype wasn’t as heavy because of New England fatigue and because the Seahawks….well…don’t exactly have a consistent fanbase outside the Northwest.
Basketball and baseball lack this necessary (NBA needs it more, MLB thrives on local numbers, excellent attendance, and phenomenal internet stats) ratings-churning drama simply because they have so many games in the season you don’t have time to dwell on a loss or an injury or a controversy. Each NFL game is a heavily-discussed and dissected heavyweight bout thanks to all the days off between matches. Muhammad Ali fought 61 times in a span of 21 years---at a rate of 126 days for every fight---so much time for buildup therefore contributing to boxing’s short-lived domination. Remember when boxing was king? It was because of the anticipation, which ranged from incessant to out-of-control. Muhammad Ali named the Rumble in the Jungle before the fight even happened.
It is never the Patriots vs. the Broncos. It is Brady vs. Manning. It is never the Panthers vs. Saints. It is Newton vs. Brees. This is why quarterbacks can celebrate, and running backs and other players can’t take it too far---don’t want to nab any attention from the quarterback characters headlining the show. The marketing scheme is brilliant to say the least, it allows for sports fans and casual fans to chime in on the action. This is why the Super Bowl draws many more viewers that has no dog in the fight as opposed to a Stanley Cup or an NBA Finals. The NFL isn’t actually rigged, it’s manipulated to become extremely mainstream friendly. And then we have the strong connection to the NCAA to allow for character development---you can see a player from YOUR town transform from college hit into a potential NFL star.
Love it or hate it, the NFL has created a flawless system that combines sports with an assortment of drama and storylines that keeps the league relevant throughout the entire year. From the Draft to the Training Camp to Preseason to Season to Wild Card to finally the over bloated yet accessible Super Bowl (Note to MLB and NBA: Start your championship games earlier. Seriously, it will help the ratings I promise) there isn’t a moment in which you can breathe without an NFL story stinging the sports headlines. It is the attention whore that always succeeds in getting the press.
120 million watched a Super Bowl that featured two teams that are generally disliked, and that’s coming after a very poor season full of bad games, bad calls, and ugly moments. That is not coincidence and it is not luck, it is a league that figured out the perfect formula—so by the end of the year even if your team is long gone and the quality of the game is far from what it used to be, you are still watching.
And when the Draft begins in April, you will most likely be paying attention to that as well.
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