McCall: How much football is too much on TV?

Jeff McCall

The old expression says you can’t get enough of a good thing. But that adage will be put to the test this fall when it comes to the amount of football on television. The football season is ready to explode on television screens with more games, more football spectacle and more yappy talk shows than ever before. The combination of football and television is a broad cultural force in America, perhaps now bordering on an unhealthy national obsession.

College football’s opening weekend will see 45 games broadcast on national television. Big television dictates starting times and even the days when games are played. Televised college football games will be played regularly this year on Thursdays, and even some Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This can’t be good for the student part of the student-athlete equation, or for the non-athlete students who attend games.

The college season has been lengthened to harvest additional revenue from television. The finalist teams in the college playoff this year will play 15 games with a season stretching from Labor Day weekend through the title game on Jan. 11. Conference playoff games and the new four-team national playoffs are designed mostly as revenue producers, the largest amount coming from broadcast rights. Notre Dame’s national title team in 1973 played only 11 games, the season beginning Sept. 22 and ending with a Dec. 31 Sugar Bowl win against Alabama. Only four Irish games were on live television that year. Now, all Irish games are national broadcasts.

When it comes to the power of television and media hype, however, the National Football League makes colleges look like pikers. The NFL generates an estimated $10 billion a year in revenue, with $6 billion coming from the sale of television rights to Fox, NBC, CBS and ESPN. The broadcasters then hype their NFL connections year-round to convince audiences that the NFL is, indeed, essential to their lives.

The NFL doesn’t really need a marketing department. Networks, sports talk radio, local newspapers and television outlets do the bandwagoning for the NFL, which is constantly in the news. In addition to the 16 games each team plays, there is endless coverage of preseason practice, off-season personnel moves, player drafts, stadium renovations, and of course, hysteria over deflated footballs or whatever distraction comes along.

The league is now looking to extend its product further into the national consciousness. It recently created an executive position, hiring a Hollywood television producer to push the brand into non-game content. That could include NFL quiz shows and reality shows. He will also oversee entertainment programs around the Super Bowl, including the halftime show. Of course, nothing says football like Katie Perry and dancing sharks.

Fantasy NFL football leagues involve an estimated 36 million participants. The fantasy craze is hustled by television as player stats are emphasized during games, featured on screen crawls and in stand-alone shows. Sure, it is fun to follow your favorite players, but studies indicate employers lose an estimated billion dollars a week in worker productivity as fans manage fantasy teams during work time. The average fantasy fan devotes three hours per week to this mania and spends nearly $500 per season in the process.

One must wonder how much the NFL can push the product before it begins to decline. Nineteenth-century French economist Jean-Baptiste Say theorized that supply creates its own demand in a market. That approach is working for the NFL currently and might for some time.

But as Fox expands its NFL pregame show this fall to two hours, no sensible person can think more supply of Terry, Jimmy and Howie yukking it up creates more demand. Demand for NFL football at some point has to take a hit from off-field disruptions by star bad boys, such as Johnny Manziel, Ray Rice and many others. Filthy-rich owners exploit local taxpayers for stadium construction deals and threaten to move the team at the first sign of resistance. Player salaries have boomed to the point where three guys who catch passes make $70 million over five years.

At some point, as most economists agree, oversupply can’t forever create its own demand. But, for now, moderation is not a virtue for fans gorging themselves on television pigskin.
