Quantity Not Quality

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Carolina Panthers 17-14 Monday night in a game that was nothing but a pair of knitting needles stuck in the eyes of the viewers.

It ended with rookie Roberto Aguayo, whose inaccuracy has become a league-wide joke, hitting a 38-yard field goal to win it for the Bucs. Whether he would actually make the kick or not was almost more enjoyable to consider than which of these miserable teams would get a victory.

Do you want to know why NFL TV ratings are on the decline? Games like this. Star quarterbacks (Cam Newton) missing because of injury, replaced by worn-out veterans (Derek Anderson) who make critical mistakes at the worst times. Young quarterbacks (Jameis Winston), who are up one week and down the next. Intrusive sideline interviews that break up the flow of the narrative (and I don’t feel that new play-by-play guy Sean McDonough adds anything, either).

There’s also the Thursday night issue. The games are awful. The home team barely gets any practice in. The visiting team might get none, traveling on Wednesday after having played on Sunday. Walk-throughs in the hotel ballroom don’t get a team ready to go. One coach told me years ago he went into a Thursday night game fully expecting to lose because his team had so many injuries it never practiced for the game at all.

Oversaturation is a problem. Pregame shows, halftime shows, in-game cut-ins, Sunday doubleheaders, Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night. And we haven’t even discussed Saturday, an entire day of college football played at a much more rapid tempo.

Too much of a good thing isn’t always good. That’s a message the NFL needs to hear.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman