Connect With Your Community!
Connect With Your Community!
This weekend I will be one of the around 100 million people in the United States who tunes in for the Super Bowl.
This year is another Super Bowl where nobody from the National Football League reached out to me about my ideas to improve the game, but I figured I better share some just in case they send out an email asking for my input.
I’m hoping next year will be the first Super Bowl that can be broadcast without announcers. Announcing is a tough gig that can never please everyone, but it has gotten to the point that it is pleasing just about no one. I’m not as annoyed by this year’s broadcast team because they are the new lead broadcast team at Fox, but most people I know would go for the mute button if they had to listen to Tony Romo one more time this year. The guy has forgotten more about football than the average viewer knows, but his color commentary has turned into a fever dream of nonsense the general public can’t wake up from. And who can forget the nail-on-chalkboard sound of Chris Collinsworth reminding everyone he played receiver in the NFL before the invention of the telegram or Joe Buck ruining a postseason broadcast much like he does every year in the MLB playoffs.
I prefer to watch college football, but one thing I enjoy about the NFL is the pace of the game is a lot quicker. If two pass-heavy teams play in college, the game can go on for four or five hours. The NFL games are much faster. This changes in the Super Bowl, and it doesn’t need to. In my line of work, I understand the importance of advertising in the media. I know many people tune into the game just for the commercials, but they need to freshen things up. It has gotten to the point commercials are advertising the commercials for the Super Bowl. They need to start selling shorter spots, so the commercials don’t have more air time than the actual sporting event.
Speaking of NFL games being around three hours long, it should be the same for every game, Super Bowl or not. One way to cut down the time of the season’s final game would be to get rid of the halftime show. I try not to pick up my phone while watching a game, but when I do during the Super Bowl, I see nothing but people either loving or hating the halftime show. The halftime show often generates more buzz than the two teams who have battled all year long to get to this point, and that doesn’t sit right with me.
And it is usually just a lip-synced version of a greatest hits album, and I don’t get the appeal of seeing someone lip-sync with a bunch of well-choreographed weirdoes dancing on the field. Keep it a 12-minute halftime, and if I want to watch Rhianna, I’ll pay for tickets to her show.
Speaking of tickets, for curiosity, I researched what it would cost for a die-hard Eagles or Chiefs fan to get some last-minute tickets to the game. The cheapest tickets I could find were around $5,000 a pop, and that is ludicrous. I would venture to say that $5,000 per ticket is out of the budget of many fans and what’s the point of having the biggest game of the year without an opportunity for a lifelong fan to go in and cheer on his team.
I’ll be tuning in Sunday for the actual football, not the spectacle or the 74-hour pregame show where all the pundits think it is a good idea to wear sneakers with a suit. I might watch the pregame show if it was a few dire hard fans sitting in lawn chairs sharing their thoughts as they drink a few cold beers. Maybe they can announce the game too.
