site banner
Lazuli  1mo ago (text post)   Edited 1mo ago   484 thread views

Weekly NFL Thread: Week 7

Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):

Thu 2024-10-17 8:15PM Denver Broncos @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-10-20 9:30AM New England Patriots @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Detroit Lions @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Miami Dolphins @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Buffalo Bills
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ New York Giants
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-10-20 4:05PM Carolina Panthers @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-10-20 4:05PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-10-20 4:25PM Kansas City Chiefs @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-10-20 8:20PM New York Jets @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Mon 2024-10-21 8:15PM Baltimore Ravens @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Mon 2024-10-21 9:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Arizona Cardinals

Week 8 thread: https://www.themotte.org/post/1216/weekly-nfl-thread-week-8

-3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Thanks for the summary. I find CFB impossible to understand or follow, the complexity of what exactly is a good season always stumps me. I would think that any simplification of the top end of the game would be beneficial to viewership.

As someone who did not attend what would currently be considered one of the top tier football schools, I used to think some of the appeal was the team acted as a sort of martial manifestation of your Alma mater. Before the transfer portal, there was at least a thin veneer of the players being students and future alumni of your school. I guess supper fans, and people at schools that are perennial contenders, care about national championships but in the BCS and earlier eras every game mattered for the quality of bowl your team could hope for an invite to. As @Rov_Scam pointed out there are far more schools that consider themselves top tier than can truly contend for a national championship in any given year. A far more reasonable standard for a good year would be to have a strong enough regular season to get invited to a decent quality bowl, and to win that bowl game.

I do think this naturally limits viewership, since you only follow your own school and maybe a few marque rivalry games. On the other hand I do think NCAAF is in extreme danger of becoming NFL B league.

Speaking of which:

Northwestern Illinois Purdue

Never up to the standard of the marque Big Ten teams in the modern era, but all three were at the founding conference for the Big Ten. This predates the NCAA. They have been members of the Big Ten longer than Ohio State, and much much longer than Pen State. I would lament a realignment that destroys some of the history and tradition of college football. Without that it's more or less just professional football at a lower standard of play. This weekends Illinois–Michigan game will be the 100th anniversary of their meeting for the dedication of Memorial Stadium; that is the dedication of the stadium to alumni killed in WWI. For once the game might actually be competitive, it would be a shame if it were never competitive again because Michigan has 5x the NIL money to spend from exclusive TV deals.

On the other hand I do think NCAAF is in extreme danger of becoming NFL B league.

Not just an NFL B-league, but the crappiest form of NFL B-league. I'd kill for a true NFL B-league compared to the way this is going to look. No draft, no salary cap, players able to leave whenever they feel like it as soon as another team offers more money. I know I said I didn't want to get into it, but I'll probably make a post next week about why I think the sport is going to reach a breaking point some time within the next decade or so. Suffice it to say that, in addition to all the antitrust stuff that isn't going to go away, I think the networks have overextended themselves a bit with the size of these Power 2 deals. There's only so much money to go around, and God forbid if we enter into a recession, in which case (as my friends in video production always point out) advertising is the first thing to get cut. Even without a recession, comparable future deals just might not be that profitable, especially considering that the SEC has historically taken a lower payout than the Big 10 despite having larger market share. There's nothing I'd like to see more than Florida State negotiate a settlement that's still really expensive, go to the Big 10 but be limited partners for the duration of the existing deal (as are oregon and Washington, who only make about half of what the ACC teams get), only to find that the next deal isn't as lucrative as they had anticipated, which wouldn't be a problem except that they're already in hock to the private equity firm that financed the exit fee.

A far more reasonable standard for a good year would be to have a strong enough regular season to get invited to a decent quality bowl, and to win that bowl game.

Yeah, around 2001 or so when I was forming my sports fandoms, I just couldn't figure out the whole Bowl Game hierarchy, and never much got into college sports at all as a result. It confused me that the AP rankings seemed just kind of arbitrary, compared to NFL or MLB standings which were very clearly based on winning/losing games between teams that have relative parity between them. I've always preferred the American professional sports model to the NCAA or UEFA models, in my mind a good season is finishing over .500 and making the end of season tournament.

I do wonder how much of that is downstream of location: as a child I went to tons of Phillies and Eagles games with my father, we never really went to college football games. I feel like my sports fandoms were really "set" by the time I was 12 or so, after that I've never formed a real emotional attachment to another team. I might decide to root for another team, but they can lose me just as easily by playing or acting in ways I don't like. Where the teams I fell in love with as a kid, short of, like, a major diddling scandal there's probably nothing that can change my fandom, though the Sixers have done their best to the point where I don't bother with the regular season.

It's interesting to me that this has quite obviously impacted my opinions on NBA and NCAA ethical issues, relative to how I feel about MLB or NFL ethical issues.

would lament a realignment that destroys some of the history and tradition of college football. Without that it's more or less just professional football at a lower standard of play.

Yeah, about that Pacific Coast Conference. That was 100 years of tradition flushed down the toilet. It's already happened, and I'm lamenting it right now.

Also, fucking Washington looks like garbage. Leaving the Pac-12 so you can lose to Rutgers and get blown out by Iowa is looking pretty dumb, especially since they're not getting any extra money to do so.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats