Things in life don’t always go quite as planned. Things in sports don’t always go quite as planned. Things in network television don’t always go quite a planned. And sometimes, all three collide in one big soupy mess of unpleasant spontaneity. That would be this week’s “Sunday” Night Football game in a nutshell. Or bread bowl; which is where I tend to prefer my soups.
On Sunday night, the Eagles and Vikings game was postponed due to something called “snow” that I am told happens everywhere on the east coast, and not just on mountains that can be conveniently visited and left at one’s leisure. Apparently this weather combined with the wind conditions was bad enough for the game to be postponed to Tuesday night; and thus, Tuesday Night Football was born.
The move to Tuesday night is based in common sense; which is ironic, since it appears that nothing else the NFL does involves common sense in the least. NBC knew they’d be steamrolled if they went up against Monday Night Football; so, they did the best they could with the time slot given. I can only imagine the logistical nightmare that was involved as far as advertising is concerned; that’s the only way that NBC makes money on this venture, after all. You can bet that savvy spenders were looking for a discounted price due to the almost assuredly smaller viewing audience that tuned into a Tuesday night game.
It seems that the move to the third day of the week messed up the Eagles as much as I’m sure it tweaked with NBC’s game plan. The Eagles were expected to steam roll a now Favre-less Minnesota Vikings team and instead were handed a loss by a “hot young quarterback” as Chris Collinsworth so… eloquently stated. Now, full-disclosure: due to the way that the game was set up on my television’s programming guide, the entirety of the game was not recorded. In fact, I only got the last eight minutes of the fourth quarter, so I apologize for the overall lack of insight that I have on this game. I didn’t need another reason to hate recorded sports, but now I have one.
From the little of the game I saw, I noticed that while just about everything seemed to be running normally, Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels seemed to be off their game a little bit. For instance, near the end of the game the Minnesota Vikings were running the clock down; which is pretty standard practice in the NFL. So when our fearless broadcasters started to stumble over their words while attempting to stall in between plays, I started to wonder if the extra days off had messed with their heads. I have no idea what they do the other six days of the week, but I’m going to assume everyone was very happy to leave Philadelphia tonight.
So, yeah, things don’t always go as planned on Sunday Night Football; but is that a bad thing? A program that nuzzles up against stale almost every week could stand to suffer a few glitches or set backs now and again. In five days the West will be won by either the Seahawks or the St. Louis Rams on Sunday Night Football, and while I’m sure the play will be mediocre, I’m truly interested to see how the broadcasters and crew hold up with the shortest rest period of the season.
