JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty One

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

Rich Hanley, Associate Professor

Lecture Twenty One


Review

• Off the field, both the college game

and the NFL kept pace with each

wave of technological change that

appeared to make the game more

accessible and popular over the last

decade of the 20th century and the

first two decades of the 21st.

• Paradoxically, it also made the game

more vulnerable.


Peak Football, Peak TV

• As noted, colleges started to use the

run-and-shoot and other spread

offenses in the 1970s as Mouse

Davis at Portland State and John

Jenkins of the University of Houston

rode a wave of innovation that kept

defenses off-balance.

• The NFL adopted it, too.



• NFL teams began to move.

Cleveland went to Baltimore and

became the Ravens, to be replaced

by an expansion team in the city also

named the Browns.

• St. Louis moved to Arizona, to be

replaced by the Rams who moved

back to Los Angeles. The San Diego

Chargers, too, moved back to Los

Angeles, the original AFL home of the



• College football likewise joined the

movable feast, only with conference

realignments as it would be

impossible to move teams.

• The Southwest Conference, one of

the first college conferences when

formed in 1914, folded in 1996.



• The Big 8 absorbed Texas and other

SWC schools and grew into the Big

12.

• It is still known as the Big 12 even

though it has only 10 teams as

Colorado joined the Pac 12, Missouri

and Texas A&M joined the

Southeastern Conference and

Nebraska joined the Big 10 to offset

the arrival of West Virginia and TCU.



• The Pac 8 became the Pac 10 and

then the Pac 12 by 2011.

• The Big Ten, formed in 1895 as the

Western Conference, grew to 12

teams by 2012 with two more added

in 2014 for a total of 14.



• The ACC, founded in 1953, added

teams from the Big East and grew to

15 teams by 2014.

• The Southeastern Conference,

formed in 1894 as the Southern

Intercollegiate Athletic Association,

changed in 1933 to its present name

and added Missouri and Texas A&M

in 2012.



• The SEC and the other four Power

Five conferences created two

divisions to present the structure for

conference title games, with the SEC

holding its first conference

championship in 1992.

• The Big 12 stopped holding

championship games in 2010 but

resumed in 2017.



• The Pac 12, Big 12, Big Ten, ACC

and SEC became known as the

Power Five conferences, positioned

to dominate football.

• The other conferences fell into the

Group of Five, with little or no chance

of their champion winning a national

title.



• The move toward a formal national

championship gathered momentum in

the early 1990s.

• In 1998, football coaches and the

university presidents developed the

Bowl Championship Series, or BCS,

as a mechanism to determine a true

national champion.



• The complex system tried to bolt a

national championship structure onto

to the existing traditional bowl games

but it failed to produce a clear

champion as a true playoff would.

• Finally in 2012, the BCS members

voted to start a four-team playoff

beginning in 2014 to determine a

champion.



• A committee would select and seed

the top four teams and integrate the

semifinals into the existing bowl

structure.

• As expected, the Power Five

conferences would dominate the

selection process, with the best of the

Group of Five conferences left with

the other bowls.



• Despite criticism, the four-team

playoff would end with a true national

champion on the field, not in the

polls.

• And that team would more likely than

not feature a spread offense capable

of scoring points – lots of points.



• The January 4, 2006, game between

Texas and USC stands illustrates the

change in offense.

• The BCS national championship

game featured the top two scoring

offenses in the nation, the first time

that happened in a bowl or BCS

game in more than two decades.



• Heisman Trophy runner-up,

quarterback Vince Young led Texas

to a 50.9 points-per-game, average.

• USC 50 points per game and had two

Heisman recipients in quarterback

Matt Leinart and tailback Reggie

Bush.



• Texas won, 41-38.

• From 1989 until that 2005, no more

than six schools averaged 40 or more

points per game in a given year.

• Since that game, at least seven

schools per year have averaged 40

or more points in most of the past 12

seasons.



• The reasons behind the explosion in

offense in both the college and pro

games are clear: rule changes to

enhance safety and scoring, a new

generation of artificial turf and

climate-controlled stadiums, and,

most importantly, new formations

featuring fast players that forced

defenses to adapt with speed and

aggression.



• The need to feed the beast of

television pushed the college and pro

game to that point.



• From 1987-2005, ESPN broadcast a

NFL game on Sunday nights, giving

fans what then-commissioner Paul

Tagliabue once described as a 12-

hour experience on that day of the

week.

• Between 1990-1997, the cable

channel TNT shared the Sunday

night slot.



• In addition to game coverage, ESPN

produced Sunday morning pre-game

shows and weeknight programs

arrayed in the space between the

NFL schedule.

• Extensive game highlights filled the

nightly Sports Center recap of games

as well.



• ESPN’s existence transformed both

pro and college football from events

an audience watched to one that, like

baseball, the audience followed now

that video would be available in many

different programs throughout the

week.



• When Direct TV launched its Sunday

Ticket on satellite in 1994, the NFL

showed that it alone could carry an

entire medium. With Sunday Ticket,

Direct TV might have failed to attract

enough subscribers to remain

solvent.



• Yet the most innovative development

in NFL coverage came from an

unlikely source: TNT.

• As noted earlier, TNT covered the

first half of the season on Sunday

night.

• TNT anticipated the extraordinary

interest in fantasy football by

including player statistics on its in-



• In the years before widespread

adoption of the World Wide Web, the

crawl provided fantasy players and

leagues with vital stats from the

games played earlier in the day.

• The web, however, proved to be the

catalyst for the emergence of a fresh

path to watch and follow football on a

massive scale.



• To be sure, fantasy football existed in

a firm state prior to consumer

adoption of the internet as an in-

home information appliance.

• Leagues formed in companies and in

social networks of friends who

circulated through local bars and

clubs.



• League members would draft players,

usually in a mid-week night of

libations and fellowship.

• A commissioner was assigned to

track the weekly statistics and

compile standings, by hand and on

paper.

• The web simplified and automated

the process, expanding the fantasy



• As when television emerged, an

uneasy sense percolated through the

NFL that fantasy football online would

undermine television coverage of

games.

• Chief among fears: fans would

monitor statistics, not watch the

game, eroding ticket sales.



• The fears were unwarranted.

• Fantasy football actually increased

TV viewership by 35 percent as fans

watched more games to track players

outside of their traditional rooting

interests.

• Increased interest meant more

revenue.



• And as the Scott’s seed company did

with its booklet titled How to Watch

Football on TV, the NFL, networks

covering the league, other sports

sites and advertisers cultivated an

audience among fantasy players.



• That attitude is based on presenting

fantasy football as a skills-based

activity that requires research and

detailed analysis.

• Recall how the booklet on watching

football on TV was based on keeping

up with the Jones in the television

age; now, fantasy football would

serve the same purpose in the digital

age.



• As one marketing scholar concluded,

“Promoting these types of aptitudes

will support and foster an experience

that encourages participants to spend

more time and money focused on the

sport products and services

associated with the fantasy sports

league.”



• The Ngram shows the explosion of

fantasy football as measured by use

of that expression in texts.



• How popular is fantasy football?

• The Fantasy Sports Trade

Association provided the following

numbers on fantasy sports:

- 57 million Americans play fantasy

sports, led by football.

- It generates more than $15 billion

each year in entry fees.



• The average fantasy football follower

spends three hours per week on

tasks associated with playing.

• Some 54 percent of fantasy sports

consumers would cancel their

subscription media (i.e., cable TV)



• The NFL moved to colonize emerging

media and new media forms just as

the original organizers of football did

in the 19th century.

• The league launched NFL.com in

1995, hiring producers and reporters

to produce original news stories, post

statistics and operate a fantasy

league.



• The NFL spotted another opportunity

to extend its footprint in 2003: cable

television.

• In November 2003, the league

launched the NFL Network.

• That gave it constant access to 85%

of TV viewers via cable or satellite.



• The NFL owned the rights to the

games and now could pay itself to

show the action on its own network,

drawing multiple revenue streams:

- Cable subscriptions

- Advertising



• At first, the NFL showed only a

handful of games on Thursday nights.

• In 2013, the league offered a full

season of Thursday games, with

extensive pre-game and post-game

programming to create more

inventory to generate more revenue,

which reached $14 billion in 2017.



• The networks, both traditional and

ESPN, meanwhile, continued to pay

billions of dollars to broadcast games

during the regular season, the

playoffs and, of course, the top-rated

show each year: the Super Bowl.



• ESPN even devoted days of

coverage to the NFL draft in the

spring.



• Yet even during this period of robust

growth in audience and revenue, the

NFL still confronted situations that

reflected the instability of its early

period in the 1920s and 1930s as

several teams moved from city to city.



• The league shuffled a handful of

teams from city to city and

experienced a spasm of stadia

building to extract money the public

to make the game even more

popular.

• Teams forced fans to buy seat

licenses in order to buy season

tickets.



• College football, meanwhile, took

ESPN’s money to reschedule games

away from its traditional Saturday

slot.

• Mid-tier Division I teams from

middling conferences jumped at the

chance for national exposure and

scheduled games for as early as

Tuesday and Wednesday nights.



• College football could not avoid

scandal as it rode a wave of

unprecedented popularity.

• One of the most inexplicable cases

occurred in the most unlikeliest of

places: Happy Valley.



• The Penn State scandal reduced all

the ills of college football into a single

campus.

• Here, a major university had been

controlled by its football coach, Joe

Paterno, simply because he won

games and his team drew 100,000

fans on Saturdays to State College,

Pennsylvania.



• Paterno, a graduate of Brown

University who grew up in Brooklyn,

N.Y., joined Penn State as an

assistant in 1950 as an assistant.

• Paterno became head coach in 1966

and over the next 45 years

established Penn State as a national

power, winning national

championships in 1982 and again



• More than that, he served a role as a

reassuring presence as cultural and

technological change rinsed through

America from the mid 1960s to the

first decade of the 21st century.

• He was, like Vince Lombardi, a

throwback to a mythological past of

small-town America run by competent

men, usually white.



• Unlike the pros and even most

college teams, Paterno’s players

embodied the team concept from

their plain uniforms without team

logos or names on the back of

jerseys to the formal road attire.

• Paterno himself wore the hitched up

pants of yore, showing his white

socks and wearing eyeglasses from



• But behind the veneer stood a coach

who, like Rockne, threatened

administrators when threatened

himself over players’ legal and

academic issues.

• He threatened to tell alumni, for

example, to withhold donations and

told academic administrators that he

would discipline players who were

arrested or otherwise in trouble.



• And most of all, he protected a former

assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, who

was accused of raping children in the

Penn State football locker room.

• In November 2011, the mask fell.

Sandusky was arrested for assaulting

children, and Paterno’s role in failing

to notify police emerged.



• Penn State fired Paterno, and

students, when hearing the news,

blamed the university and took to the

streets to protest to protect their

football coach, or rather their idea of

a football coach.



• Paterno died of cancer within months

of his dismissal.

• The university removed the statute

erected in his honor outside Beaver

Stadium.

• The NCAA later imposed sanctions

on the school that fell just shy of the

death penalty.



• The fall of Joe Paterno revealed the

same appearance versus reality

theme that had accompanied football

since the 19th century.

• That theme would deepen as

leagues, coaches and fans relied

increasingly on technology as their

interface with the game.



• The rise of video, internet and digital

technology from the mid 1980s to the

present consistently amplified the

NFL’s already dominant position and

helped college teams as well.



• In 1986, the NFL adopted instant

replay to review calls, adding an

element of strategy to the process by

leaving the decision to go to the

booth up to the coach.

• Replay rules have been tinkered with

over time to the present structure.



• College and NFL teams were

featured on video games, which

became ever more sophisticated and

realistic as the century deepened.

• Licensing deals for jerseys and

official gear, meanwhile, presented

opportunities for fresh flows of cash,

with online sales booming.



• Yet amid the rain of cash, problems

lurked.

• College players, for one, wanted a

piece of the video game and clothing

action given that the NCAA marketed

jerseys with their names on it.

• In response, the NCAA decided to

end participation in video games after

2014.



• The rise of fantasy football online and

video game licensing fees created a

torrent of cash, but it pointed to an

era when the violence of the game

would become blurred in the

abstractions of statistics.



• Yet through all the heroics, scandals

and cash, one fact that had been

apparent in the 19th century became

ever more so evident: the game’s

physical toll on players.



• Simply put, football had never really

changed after all these years despite

massive shifts in the technology and

culture.

• But it’s future look less certain than it

had even in 1905 when calls to ban

the game forced President Theodore

Roosevelt to step in.



• By the middle of the second decade

of the 21st century, youth participation

rates would fall.

• Television ratings likewise slumped.

• Would America awaken from its

dream life and end its love of ecstasy

and violence as exemplified by

football?

Education

JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty One