College Football Leaves Nfl In Dust
Did any televised NFL game last Sunday measure up to Ohio State-Notre Dame the day before? Does any pro football game this Sunday compare in anticipation with Penn State-Ohio State today?
If you’re not an NFL junkie, the answers are no and no.
Truly, major college televised games carry more expectation than a typical Sunday of up to 12 games of pro football sprinkled across TV screens to areas of maximum interest.
Even among top-ranked schools, most collegiate stars have not been seen very much on television. Have you ever heard of Orlando Pace? He is everyone’s All-American, maybe the No. 1 pick in the next NFL draft. Gauging college teams’ strengths and weaknesses also is difficult because, except for Notre Dame, they are not on network television as much as even a team like the Jets. As in life, unfamiliarity does breed a certain charm.
College football enjoys another advantage. It provides more action. There is a maximum of 25 seconds between plays, compared to 45 in the pros. And the collegiate clock stops after a first down.
Keith Jackson, the godfather of college football broadcasting after 47 years with the assignment, cites a subtle factor. “It is the bands. It means about 600 people are entertaining you instead of 60,” he said.
He also credits the “humanity” of the college stadium crowds. “You don’t boo a 19-year-old kid when he makes a mistake,” he said. Boo-birds descend quickly on losing pro teams, and this permeates living rooms. It is not for nothing that critics call the NFL the “No Fun League.”
“And Walter Mitty still lives there,” Jackson said of college football, referring to a single play that exalts an athlete for life, such as Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary” pass in 1984.
If college football is more appealing in the living room, why do so many more watch the pros on Sundays?
If ABC averages a 6 rating and CBS a 4 today, reasonable expectations, and if about 3 rating points are allowed for 10 more games on the screen between noon and 10 p.m., the total ratings points will be about one-half of the combined audiences on NBC and Fox Sunday afternoon. (The NFL will pull about 30 more ratings points from its Sunday and Monday night telecasts.)
The NFL on TV each Sunday is an institution, part of the social calendar. It does not matter so much who is playing whom. But colleges must rely on truly big games to rope in audiences on Saturday afternoons.
Yet at the very outset of a college football telecast, there is an air of excitement missing with NFL games. Penn State and Ohio State players will race through the tunnel around 12:40 p.m. (PST) as their bands play their fight songs, electrifying the 80,000 fans in Ohio Stadium, which in turn will seep into any TV viewer with a soul.
Popularity test
If case you didn’t see Tuesday afternoon’s introductions of Orioles and Indians players for their American League playoff opener in Baltimore, be informed that Roberto Alomar received the biggest ovation of all.
The tribute took place without editorial comment by ESPN announcers Jon Miller,Dave Campbell and Kirby Puckett, but was a reminder that Albert Belle generally gets the warmest reception in Cleveland.
The continuing appreciation of Alomar in Baltimore and Belle in Cleveland, it can be argued, is a healthy outlet for human emotions because, as Henry Kissinger once said of fierce disputes in academia, the real-life stakes are so small.
Ratings down
The Rangers-Yankees series opener on NBC Tuesday night attracted a 17-percent smaller audience than the opening telecast on The Baseball Network, the unpopular TV plan of last October. But TBN targeted viewers by sending each of four games to markets of regional interest and blacking out the other three. The artifice assured higher ratings, but cheated baseball fans.
Still, all of America had a chance to watch the game at Yankee Stadium, and only 15 percent chose to do so. That’s pretty slim. The Rangers-Yankees playoff game that continued to nearly 12:40 a.m. Thursday morning attracted about the same audience, based on major market returns.
If there is a fifth Indians-Orioles game, it will be carried Sunday night on the Fox Network and compete with the presidential debate that will be on five other TV outlets.