Let me state this right up front so that there's no confusion: I love the National Football League.
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| Is there a baseball equivalent of the Bengals? (Getty Images) |
That said, did anybody pay attention to the product that the league trotted out onto the field Week 1, or to the presentation of said product?
I did, and I can't for the life of me understand how we collectively perceive baseball as a sport in transition and the NFL as America's Great, Mirthful Game and Emotional Driving Force For Totally Non-Homoerotic Brotherhood.
More people like football. I get this. I won't attempt to argue otherwise, because there's not much of an argument to be made in baseball's favor. The NFL attracts more eyeballs on a per-game basis, sells more jerseys and tchotchkes, and generally excites the masses in a way that no other pastime (in the U.S., anyway) does.
I just don't get the double standard in how we perceive the two sports.
Take the horrible, horrible steroid scandal that has invalidated every single ball struck by a MLB hitter between 1996 and 2005. Or at least that's what an individual perusing a lion's share of recent baseball coverage would be led to believe. That individual would also view Barry Bonds as some combination of Liza Minnelli and the antichrist, and Rick Ankiel as the biggest letdown since Daddy Day Care 2: Care Harder.
Yet we barely batted an eye when, last season, Shawne Merriman got popped for 'roids. Merriman is larger than any member of the famed Washington Redskins' Hogs offensive line, can outrun most running backs, and plays with the whirligig ferocity of a starving puma.
We were shocked -- shocked! -- that substances might have had a hand in any of this, because most linebackers similarly defy physics. But hey, Merriman said it wasn't his fault -- somebody slipped a roofie into his Count Chocula, or something -- so we forgave him the second his suspension expired.
But forget the steroids, because every athlete in every sport is juiced (either you believe that or you believe that only those individuals who have tested positive are guilty -- you can't have it both ways). My main gripe with the NFL is that the league and its ambassadors keep telling me how to feel, keep telling me how wonderful its product is, when the evidence on the field suggests otherwise.
Like most carnivorous American males who love freedom, I spent last Thursday night watching the Colts go marching in, over and around the Saints. Just for kicks -- OK, mostly because the remote was on the fritz -- I didn't toggle between the game and CSI: Somewhere or Other during commercials.
Holy lord, don't ever try this, but here's my rough transcript of the first 20 minutes:
Red-carpet-themed intro, Faith Hill or a well-appointed robot facsimile thereof warbling something that approximates "music," folksy isn't-this-great aphorism from Madden, kickoff, actual game action, folksy isn't-this-great aphorism from Madden, commercial featuring Peyton Manning, commercial featuring Peyton Manning, commercial featuring multiple Peyton Mannings, commercial featuring a jingle so ubiquitous and off-putting that I've sworn off both Chevy Trucks and John Cougar Rodham Zeta Jones Federline Mellencamp, then finally more actual game action.
The presentation isn't all the NFL's fault -- and yes, I realize that it's dangerous to attempt half-assed media commentary on a website allied with one football-broadcasting conglomerate and not the others.
But at some point, the league has to understand that it is destroying the viewing experience for viewers both at home (by presenting the aforementioned marketing/entertainment mish-mash) and ones at the stadium (by asking them to wait patiently while the assault on the home viewer is perpetrated).
And then there are the pregame shows, which baseball mostly eschews. The message they attempt to convey is this:
"We are having so much fun here, taunting each other just like y'all do, except that we can't get personal or mention the time when we saw Howie's niece naked. Our camaraderie is so intense and unrehearsed, it might even prompt you to drink Coors Light. Probably not, though. You have standards."
Contrast this with your average baseball broadcast. If you can get past the homer tendencies of most local play-by-play men -- I think I heard Ken Harrelson call Paul Konerko "dear heart" after the slugger won a game a few weeks back -- you're generally treated to a brisk 150 minutes of action, a perfect compliment to the lazy summer nights during which the games air.
Yes, baseball loses its mind during the postseason, what with the extra short-bus kid stuffed into the broadcast booth for the championship series and animated talking baseballs that threaten democracy as we know it. Overall, though, baseball does a better job of keeping the focus on the damn game. That's not such a bad thing. It's why we're there in the first place.
Football also seems to have lapped baseball in the hypocrisy department -- no small feat, given how Bud Selig and Co. keep making the parity argument at a time when no fewer than 12 out of 30 franchises are second-class citizens.
On one hand, the NFL instructs us how JACKED UP! we should be about tooth-loosening hits that leave the victim on the fast track to Tapiocaville. On the other, the league and its players' union doesn't seem to do a whole lot for those guys once they've passed 35.
Maybe we're at a tipping point. While baseball is receiving long-overdue props for things like its inventive use of the web, the NFL has taken its share of lumps over the last few months. Michael Vick's particularly abhorrent brand of malfeasance has been well documented, clearly. Webster's Dictionary now runs the 2006 Cincinnati Bengals team photo alongside its entry for "felon."
Or maybe I'm just a frustrated sports fan venting about how the NFL has made entertaining the masses more of a priority than tending to its core fans. I'm not much of a columnist when I'm up on my soapbox (actually, as some of you are so kind to remind me every week, I'm not much of a columnist even when I'm not).
But it saddens and confuses me that somehow baseball is the sport with the real problem, even as the NFL slides by with a nothing substance-abuse policy and as Leonard Little -- who merely killed another human being while zipping about town with a .19 BAC -- continues to collect six-figure game checks.
Good thing he didn't shove around a cameraman like Kenny Rogers did, or he'd really be in trouble. What do you say we attempt to mete out our outrage a bit more even-handedly from here on out?
Larry Dobrow is a freelance writer based in New York and Maxim Online's regular baseball columnist.
