Now that the NFL’s 2010 season has been completed and we await the playoffs to decide the 46th Annual Super-bowl participants, it might be a good time to discuss bigger issues with respect to America’s favorite game. This exercise is far less stressful and depressing than discussing the barely-alive U.S. economy and its dysfunctional political system. I bring a dispassionate view to the entire exercise due to my partial French ancestry and my general disinterest in much of the sport’s regular season and enhanced interest during the next several weeks of playoff and championship games.
I’m more interested in the bigger picture as the league is part of our continuous flow of national spectacles necessary to preoccupy the population while our nation quickly collapses into its final decades a la Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is not just coincidence that American Football is a direct descendant of the gladiatorial matches held in the Roman Coliseum. It is probably the only large business operation in the modern world to still use Roman Numerals. Thus on February 6, MMXI, it will conduct Super Bowl XLV. (Even Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Bowl_champions lists them by their Roman Numerals so it is a pain to find one by normal numbers.) The player Chad Ochocinco should have LXXXV stitched on his Jersey. In fact, every player should have Roman Numerals on his uniform – or they could just be reserved for certain positions, top stars, or highly-compensated ones. Earning $2.5 million a year would be (MMD) – the parenthesis meaning to multiply the 2,500 by 1,000.
Numerous studies have overwhelmingly shown that despite the official time of games, the average one contains only about 12 minutes of actual action time, the rest of the time ticking away is occupied by getting up, getting on and off the field, huddling, and rearranging themselves on the field between the actual plays. However those few minutes of organized mayhem produce some memorable sports moments and cause all the season-ending injuries that significantly alter the wins and losses of the 32 franchises.
There are various proposals for additional measures to protect the players from career-ending injuries and a later life dissolving into dementia. Too much of the offensive strategy depends upon top quality quarterbacks and very good linesmen to prevent impending annihilation by gargantuan monsters bred over the past 50 years to populate the average professional defensive roster. A quarterback should be considered “down” and play immediately ceased if a defensive player puts both hands on him – almost a flag-football moment. The ball would be downed at that point as well for the next play.
Another worthwhile idea would be to eliminate all face guards and make all helmets see-thru but with colored feathers on the top a la Roman Centurion style. No tackling would be permitted using the head and any hands on the face or head would result in stiff penalties, generally a loss of down and at least 10 yards, plus big financial fines imposed upon the offending players. It seems impossible to avoid the many injuries to knees, groins and other parts of the human anatomy, but not using the head in any tackling might reduce their frequency as well. It would be nice to actually see the faces of the players – something that might keep many more women and gay men interested in the game.
A lot of useless mayhem in the hope of occasionally seeing a touchdown is associated with kickoffs. After any score, the other team would just start at the 20-yard-line by default. Punts would be the only surviving source of this useless mayhem. The opening kick-off would merely become ceremonial in which everyone would watch to see how far the kicker could send the ball into the stands. This would permit the mayhem on the field to be transferred for a brief moment to the fans in the cheap bleachers fighting over the football – not unlike a foul ball in baseball.
Celebrating after scoring should be encouraged as a new team assignment, possibly involving the cheerleaders as well. I would like to see extravagant displays after each score. Fans could instantly text-message their scores for the celebrations to a special booth in the press box. At the end of the game, players would be awarded financial bonuses who performed the best celebrations unless such displays resulted in the injury of any player, coach, cheerleader, fan or member of the press. Sportscasters would also be encouraged to yell “scooooore” for long periods of time as is done with Soccer “goooooooal.”
From an economic standpoint, all unsold stadium seats would have to be distributed for free to local college students or assigned to a group of people who registered for these tickets at the start of the season because they could not afford them. Preference would be given to family groups. I’m sure a Facebook page could be quickly designed to complete this registration. Since most stadiums have been publicly-financed boondoggles that only serve to enrich some of our oligarchy, this is the least we could demand in return.
It’s time to end the disastrous 12-year expansion experiment in Cleveland. Since opening in the 1999 season, the Browns have gone 64-129 (33%) through 4 coaches with only one playoff appearance. The Merry-go-round of players through this dismal franchise probably also set a record during that same period of time.
The original Browns franchise moved to Baltimore and has performed very well since then. I like Baltimore as a city – having visited there several times on business. It was sad that the Colts left that city earlier but the replacement has certainly been a positive addition to the city and its football fans. The ugly circumstances of both moves will forever grate on fans in both cities but that’s what happens when making money trumps everything else in a society.
Further expansion of the total teams in the NFL is probably unwise. There are an insufficient number of top notch and physically durable men coming out of college to fully keep up with the demands of the professional teams. I would argue that about 50 college programs should become minor league training grounds for the pros where players are actually paid a decent annual salary and not required to attend classes.
It is time to merge the pathetic Cleveland Browns with the hapless Cincinnati “Bungles” Bengals. If the season moves to 18 games and 4 pre-season exhibitions, it would be easy to split the home games, not only between the two Ohio cities, but also include Columbus as well. Not only is Columbus in the geographic center of the state, over the past 30 years it has grown in population and political power to far exceed both Cleveland and Cincinnati. A new professional soccer team could be played in the same stadiums and represent all of Ohio.
The extra franchise would be placed in Los Angeles, the second largest city, metro area, and advertising market in the U.S. The games could be played in the Rose Bowl. I would not recommend the city, county or state pledge any dollars for a new stadium but that era of billionaires taking communities hostage to get new stadiums has probably run its course. The U.S. public and private sectors are pretty well broke and the only likely threat might be to move the entire NFL league to China and India. There they can find billions of fans and generous governments willing to build any useless edifice just to stick it in the eye to the Americans.
The next step over the next few years will be to completely outsource our Federal, State and local governments to save billions of dollars and increase the unemployment rate in the U.S. to over 50%. Why can’t an Indian teacher handle a grade school classroom in Kansas City via Skype? It’s not that American children will have any viable employment opportunities once they graduate. (For those who had thought I would stay exclusively on Football don’t really know me.)
A final suggestion would be to have the Buffalo Bills move half their games to Toronto, a very large English-speaking city that loves American Football and has 4 times the total population and market advantages of its neighboring U.S. region, the dying Far Western part of New York State. It is also not a snow-belt city since it is located on the fortunate side of a Great Lake.
Unfortunately, there’s no large Canadian city close to Detroit to which that perennial losing franchise could be relocated. Montreal is just not into Baseball or Football. Listening to either of those sports in French is most unnatural for any francophone. Besides, Quebec suffers from at least 9 months of Canadian Winter. However, Mexico City might welcome a new American football franchise as part of a NAFTA deal to relocate about 1 million illegal Mexican immigrants from Arizona, Texas and elsewhere in the U.S. to repopulate Detroit. It could be made a requirement to any future amnesty or path to citizenship to live at least 5 years in any of the depressed U.S. cities located around the Great Lakes.
Global Climate Change (really hot summers with more rain and snow in many places during the winter) may be the future for North America and much of the globe. It might be worthwhile to seriously consider moving all NFL games to warmer venues after November. Certainly the beautiful new Glendale (NW suburban Phoenix, AZ) stadium with its retractable roof can easily accommodate about 3 or 4 back-to-back games on every Saturday and another same-sized group of games on every Sunday.
Just as college bowl teams and their fans happily visit Arizona, Florida and California every December and January, most NFL teams could set up semi-permanent camps in these warmer climates. Besides, most football fans today prefer the televised version of following their teams and most cannot afford to attend most NFL games in person. There are plenty of empty hotel rooms in the Phoenix area to accommodate the faithful for the 3 months of Football that should be relocated to warmer areas. The extreme global weather and climate may be all Al Gore’s fault, but it is more likely than not that winters are going to be more and more brutal in the Northern half of the U.S. The NFL and the American people need to plan their schedules and lives for the next X (10) years.
There are probably many other good suggestions for various improvements to the NFL. Most TMV readers are welcome to chime in their suggestions through the commentary section. In conclusion, I’m predicting that the New England Patriots will play the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl XLV on February 6, MMXI.
May we all be no worse off at the end of 2011 than we were at the end of 2010. Happy 2011 predictions to everyone!!
Submitted 1/3/11 by Marc Pascal from Phoenix, AZ.