When it comes to professional sports in the United States, there can be no doubt the gorilla in the room is the NFL, by a wide margin. Some NASCAR and major league baseball fans might dispute that -- but the numbers don't lie. Both in total revenue generated and over-all popularity amongst the massses, the NFL rules, and has for many years.
Of course, this is a phenomenon peculiar to the United States (but then again -- so is NASCAR). Elsewhere around the world, soccer reigns supreme. Can all those billions of people be wrong? Beats me, but it is what it is.
That said, something interesting happened earlier tonight. The NFL was featuring one of their Thursday night games, while at the same time Game 2 of the World Series was being played. Let's open up our minds as to what happened and how it may well have come about.
First of all, even up to a few days ago, nobody knew which two teams would make it to the World Series, though whoever they were, they were both going to be very good. Baseball playoffs are always a crap-shoot. Anybody can beat anybody else in a short series. It just happened to turn out that Boston and St. Louis came out on top.
Conversely, the NFL scheduled the Thursday night contest between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers several months ago. They knew EXACTLY who would be playing on 10/24/13. Further, one can logically assume the NFL honchos also knew a World Series game was going to happen in the same time slot (teams unknown, but it's the World Series and that's a big deal). And besides money, what's the most important thing to sports leagues and their TV collaborators? Ratings, which basically equate to $$ in the TV world. Further yet, though they would never say such a thing, the NFL also knew that Carolina and Tampa Bay were projected to be bottom-feeding teams this year.
So one might then logically ask -- why would the NFL schedule a game between two teams they already knew weren't going to be very good -- and throw it up against a World Series game during the same time slot? Worse yet, the football game was on the fledgling NFL Network, that either isn't available or costs a pretty penny on some cable/dish packages. Meanwhile the World Series was being beamed worldwide on mighty Fox TV. There's folks around the world living deep in caves or jungles with battery powered 4-inch black and white TVs but, by God, they can watch channel 2.
Even being the King Kongs they are, it would seem not even the NFL could overcome such a marketing blunder.
But that's where yours truly suspects the plot thickens. They did it on purpose. The NFL knew they would lose this one paltry ratings skirmish, likely by a wide margin. I think they willingly reverted back to the survival instincts that most other animals have done since the dawn of their existence. When casualties are unavoidable, sacrifice your weakest so the strongest may survive to further propagate the species. Only humans send their strongest and most fit off to be slaughtered to protect the weak in times of strife. Food for thought.
And methinks that's what happened in the case of the Carolina/Tampa Bay game going up against the World Series. The NFL could just as easily scheduled a San Fran/Seattle or KC/Denver game. After all, being in the same divisions, those teams have to play each other twice a year anyway. But why dispatch some of your elite special forces to fight a (ratings) battle they are doomed to lose, when you can send a couple Gomer Pyle squads out to do the same thing, and continue winning the war?
In my humble opinion, the NFL knew precisely what they were doing when they scheduled this game.
Sorry Charlotte and Tampa, but occasionally lambs have to be sacrificed to appease the TV gods, so they may continue to look favorably down on we mere mortal fans in the future.
And this time -- you were it.
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