The television finally delivered some NFL games that count this week, beginning with A Very Special Thursday Night Edition of “Sunday Night Football,” the stalwart NBC product that will probably be the No. 1 prime time TV show for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.
On top of that, we’re likely looking at the ninth consecutive year in which “Sunday Night Football” tops the primary metric, the so-called “advertiser-coveted” demographic aged 18-49. As a member of the advertiser-repulsed 50-99 demographic, I might remind the young people that football, most particularly NFL football, has an endemic advantage over other games of having pretty much always been better on TV than it is live.
Baseball is better live. Hockey is better live. Basketball is better in impossibly cramped and smelly gymnasiums the likes of which no longer exist on television and maybe anywhere else. Football, by contrast, began morphing into a TV show all the way back in the late 1950s, a conversion long since completed.
While it’s true that the NFL on TV isn’t everything it once was in terms of ratings, it still virtually dwarfs just about everything else. The league’s so-called anthem issue, stoked primarily by Donald Trump, is little more than a classic case of ratings envy. Few things impress this vapid president like TV ratings (“Look at her ratings!” he gushed prior to Roseanne Barr’s firing over a racist tweet), so a few scorekeepers in the NFL offices no doubt delighted while compiling the chart they put on page 538 of the 2018 Official National Football League Record & Fact Book With A Capital &!
According to that chart of the top 20 U.S. television broadcasts of 2017, Trump’s inauguration ranked ninth with 30,600,000, the Steelers-Patriots AFC title game ranked third with 48,000,000, and the Super Bowl was No. 1 with 111,300,000. Imagine if Sean Spicer had worked for Roger Goodell. In TV land, the NFL’s dominance of the 18-49ers has only increased. According to Michael Mulvihill of Fox Sports, who cited Nielsen data in a tweet last week, in 2017, 71 of the most viewed TV shows by that demographic were NFL games. In 2007, that was true of only 22 of the top 100.
This isn’t to suggest the league is without issues, only that from an entertainment standpoint, the main problem is happily still the same – how can we make this year’s product look even more compelling than last year’s, a problem best framed by just remembering the way the 2017 season ended.
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Pittsburgh probably remembers it most deliciously for the fact that the New England Patriots lost, meaning the Steelers’ total of six Super Bowl victories remained unmatched, but more aesthetically, the Patriots lost spectacularly – despite a Super Bowl record 613 yards, despite Tom Brady’s Super Bowl record 505 passing yards, despite Rob Gronkowski’s nine catches for 116 yards and Danny Amendola’s eight for 152 – they lost to a team that had never won the Super Bowl. The Eagles scored the game’s last nine points to win 41-33.
Three weeks earlier, the Atlanta Falcons held the Eagles to a single touchdown but lost 15-10 in an NFC divisional playoff game on which history might have turned on the last Matt Ryan pass.
“If you think back, we did that playoff game, and it was the last-second pass to Julio Jones that was incomplete, or else we would have had the Falcons going forward and no ‘Philly Special,’ and none of the things that came with it,” NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth said in a conference call with the season about to begin. “The Atlanta defense was the last bunch to shut down Philadelphia’s offense because they went on an explosion over the next two (games) in the NFC Championship Game (38-7 over the Vikings) and the Super Bowl.”
The Philly Special burned itself indelibly into Super Bowl lore, a fourth-and-goal reverse pass from then Eagles tight end Trey Burton to quarterback Nick Foles in the end zone, the best trick and the prettiest play in the Super Bowl since Antwaan Randle-El found Hines Ward floating behind a flock of Seahawks in Detroit.
The Steelers, who’ve won more Sunday night games (28) than anyone except the Dallas Cowboys (32), will have three more shots this season, but only one at home, which comes Sept. 30 against the Ravens.
This is apparently fine with club president Art Rooney II, who told our own Ed Bouchette last month that Steelers fans have become somewhat weary of the attention.
“I would rather not have as many night games,” Rooney said . “Last year we had three home night games almost in a row. I just don’t think our fans want to do that anymore.”
I think he’s right, and I think I know why: After 60 years, it’s finally registering that this league is better in your family room than in the seats. Start with the free parking, right? Case closed.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com
First Published: September 8, 2018, 3:00 p.m.
Updated: September 8, 2018, 3:52 p.m.