Braylon Edwards Rips Cleveland in Most Hilariously Delusional Quotes Yet
August 10, 2010Da Clip Show: Keeping an Eye on the Tribe’s AAA Squad – 8/10/2010
August 10, 2010Just in case you thought for half a second that baseball might still be America’s pastime, you are wrong. Â This Sunday proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Â I love baseball too, so don’t feel too sad. Â Just admit that we all are obsessed with football. Â The 365 day cycle of the NFL is officially complete. Â They changed the draft and made us into zombies trying to remember stats and tape from the combine. Â Oh yeah, the combine? Â That is on the NFL Network and I know more than a few people who watched that too. Â Now it is even more official. Â What were you watching this weekend?
If you’re like the rest of the American sports viewing public, you chose the Hall of Fame Game between Cincinnati and Dallas on NBC. That contest not only trounced ESPN’s airing of the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees game, but its 7.6 rating is the highest for any NFL preseason game in six years, more than doubling the Yankees-Red Sox, which drew a 2.7 rating.
We can talk about the constant over-hyping of Red Sox vs. Yankees and the East Coast bias that exists at ESPN some other day. Â The fact remains that when those two over-spending juggernauts meet, it scores big in TV ratings. Â But obviously, a regular season series between those two mortal enemies in August wasn’t quite good enough to trump a meaningless NFL contest where we saw more than our fair share of Jon Kitna slinging the pigskin around the field.
The higher ratings for the HOF game are also attributable to a few outside factors unrelated to the NFL. Â First and foremost, two Bengals receivers have TV shows. Â The spectacle of having Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco on the same team is a draw in and of itself because they both happen to be dipping their toes into the reality TV game. Â On top of that “America’s Team” the Dallas Cowboys is also a larger than average national draw when it comes to the NFL. Â Wrap it all up in the final bow that the NFL was on national TV while the baseball game was on cable, and you can easily explain away the disparity.
Ultimately though, I think it is plain to see and fair to say that America has once again missed football and yearns to see it on their TVs again. The Browns will be playing their first meaningless game in Lambeau Field on Saturday at 8:00 PM.
10 Comments
America got futball all summer and it was awesome.
anyone know how to watch the browns pre-season game in columbus?
oh wait looks like WBNS channel 10 (at least on uverse) will have it.
on another note I think its a supply and demand thing with football vs baseball you have like 10% the number of games per year.
i still prefer baseball just because its fun to follow a team and watch them 6 out of 7 days a week.
I wonder if #6 was watching the Yankees or Cowboys???
@JNeids
Probably a mirror, actually.
Since I finally got an HDTV, I’ve come to enjoy watching baseball on TV again, but it’s really a sport that’s 10x as much to go watch in-person. The experience of being in the ballpark is an addition to the game that’s going-on.
Today*, football feels the opposite for me. I’d rather watch a football game on TV because the weather is usually better, you can see all the plays and you can easily hit the bathroom in-between possessions.
* My family had 4 Browns season tickets to Municipal Stadium since 1946: upper deck in front of the poles, home side on the 50-yard line. AMAZING seats! Back then, I would prefer to GO to the games. The PSLs we were offered in the same area of the new stadium were WAY out of our price range and now we sit on the visitor’s side on the Dawg Pound goal line where we end-up standing the whole time and watching 50% of the game on the screens to know what’s going-on.
I live in NJ, thus not having the local channels. what station will have the Browns@Green Bay game? Would it be on STO or is that wishful thinking?
Anyone know where I can find the Browns game in Beijing? Anyone?
I can proudly say that I totally forgot what day the HOF game was and watched soccer on ESPN2 instead. Or was it FSC? Either way.
Then I remembered and flipped it over. Commercial. Back to soccer. Back over. Football! Then a turnover. Commercial. No starters in. Yeah, back to soccer for the remainder of that game.
NFL is king in the country, end of story..