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Since I have pretty much stopped following the NFL (except for when my hapless Buffalo Bills are on), and have no desire to delve deeply into the over-commercialized miasma that is the NFL today, I decided to whip up a map from the halcyon days of the late 1970′s in the NFL.
In 1978, the NFL expanded the regular season from a 14-game to a 16-game schedule. The playoffs were also expanded, with an extra wild card team from each conference qualifying for the post-season. This increased the playoff teams from 8 to 10. Here is Wikipedia’s page on the 1978 NFL season {Click here}.
Here is a real blast from the past…the intro for The NFL Today on CBS, circa 1978 {Click here (Youtube) }. This show started a half hour before the first games on Sundays, not an hour before. And as smarmy as Brent Musburger was, he and his colleagues did not shout over each other and engage in the sort of banter suitable for junior high schoolers. Why are the co-hosts on the pre-game shows on Fox (and CBS these days) always so hyped up? There is zero sense of decorum. And back then there were no freaking fantasy football stats continually cluttering the screen and the show content itself {see this, The fantasy that’s ruining football, by Dave Zirin at the Los Angeles Times}.
And there was no ridiculous Fox Sports NFL robot, jumping up and down and pointing at the viewer, appearing on the screen before and after every commercial break, which means every few minutes. Here is a what a commenter at the ipetitions.com site’s post about a petition to get rid of the stupid Fox NFL robot said, about the stupid Fox NFL robot [which is, Har Har, named 'Cletus']:…”: It doesn’t make any sense…why does the (presumably metal) robot have a helmet? Is there a robot football league? Who is he gesturing to? Why is he “warming-up”…he’s a robot… It’s a stupid, stupid, unnecessary part of the broadcast. I watch the broadcast for football, not to see some extremely pointless, confounding robot thing. Get rid of it, nitwit executives.”…{comment made by Jeff Miller at Fox Sports NFL, please lose the dancing robot, “Cletus”. (ipetitions.com/cletus)}. {Also see this, I don’t usually complain about robots (foreverdunk.com).}
I am sorry, but these days the NFL is mostly unwatchable {see this (Musings From the Coast)}. The sheer volume of television commercials the NFL and their complicit networks are able to cram into a game is stupefying. I used to think it was pathetic that European football (aka soccer) teams had to resort to putting sponsor advertisements on the front of their jerseys. It took me a few years to realize that the trade-off for the fan was that they still got to watch 45 minutes-plus of a sporting event completely free of commercial interruptions. And sure, there are TV time-outs in other North American sports, but not to the blatant extent that there are in NFL broadcasts. And with baseball on TV, you know every half-inning there will be one minute and 30 seconds of ads, plus ads when there is a pitching change. This is not a problem; it actually is convenient, if you want to get something from the refrigerator, etc. But it is a common occurrence in NFL broadcasts for there to be a punt or kickoff, then another round of commercials. It’s like they are holding you hostage. And don’t get me started on the commercials themselves, with their infantile points of view. It just got to the point with me where I said ”enough”. Watching the NFL on TV these days literally sucks the life-force out of me.
Thanks to the Helmet Helmets Helmets site {Click here}.