If you watch television or listen to the radio at all, there is a good chance that you have seen the NFL’s latest attack on Time Warner and Comcast regarding the NFL Network. With the network carrying the Cowboys-Packers game this Thursday, the ads have intensified around here. There have been plenty of other opinions out there about this issue, but those who do not have this channel are not missing the haven of football programming that the NFL suggests with its advertising.

The bottom line for these ads: if you don’t have NFL Network because of your cable company, the NFL wants you to pay the fees to disconnect your cable and pay the fees to get the Dish Network so that you can get these games. My opinion: you are really not missing that much and might want to consider learning to use Sopcast.

So What’s My Beef with NFL Network?

I’ve paid $6.95 a month to my cable provider to have NFL Network on a sports tier for the past two seasons, having converted from Time Warner to a competitor. I was extremely excited to have access to the channel, and I generally tune in daily. I simply never tire of football programming and am perfectly willing to spend a significant portion of my free time watching this programming (I admit my insomnia and need something to watch at 2 a.m.). NFL Network advertises that it is “Football 24/7″, but I do not think it is possible to want to watch this channel that often because of the decisions that the network has made. Just a few points to get us started:

* The network appears to spend more time working on self-promotion than it does on its shows. If you watched NFL Network for an entire 24 hour period, my bet would be that you would see an ad for America’s Game no fewer than 48 times, and probably more. And to make matters worse, IT IS THE SAME AD! Last year I complained about the first ad for this show (see here), but the new ad has been running for more than year now. It is the one that begins with Mike Singletary saying, “We knew in that huddle that was a group destined to apply the kind of pressure that had not been seen before.” I have no doubt that I have seen that ad more than 500 times, and when it comes on I have to fumble for the remote to mute it. [In writing this post, I have muted it three times now]. Ads for other programming are likewise shown repeatedly.

* Want to see arrogance at its worst? Go to I Want My NFL Network! This isn’t about you. It’s about the NFL’s revenues.

* The NFL Network’s programs and talent are largely inferior to the shows and people on ESPN and elsewhere. The broadcasts are perhaps the worst part of the package, due largely to Bryant Gumbel’s incompetence. There are some very good people out there who would probably fit in very well, but NFL Network choses to rely on analysts with virtually no experience, experienced guys who lack talent, and others who simply have no personality. Cris Collinsworth’s color commentary on the broadcasts does not make up for all of this.

* The channel does not offer anything that couldn’t be offered elsewhere, especially ESPN. While ESPN isn’t what it once was, it is still superior to what NFL Network offers, and the gap is not closing.

Evolution of Football Programming

Never has there been so much football programming on cable or television and general, and the NFL Network is only a relatively small part of it. In addition to the expansion of broadcasts from one or two per day (1960s during the AFL days) to at least four per week on Sunday and Monday, the programs that offer highlights and commentary have also grown significantly. Here is a short look:

* Monday Night Football: For a number of years, viewers watched Monday Night Football‘s halftime show because it was the first and perhaps only time that highlights from Sunday afternoon may be shown. Howard Cosell was the master of this segment.

* Inside the NFL: Although HBO’s Inside the NFL has been on the air since the mid-1970s, many people (including me) did not have cable until the early 1980s. And this show was the best part of the cable package. It aired on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and showed NFL Films highlight clips of every game. These were the days when the show only featured Len Dawson and Nick Buoniconti, and it was entertaining because it focused on what we wanted: the game highlights.

* CNN Headline News: When we wanted to see scores, we used to have to wait until NFL Today or NBC’s NFL show had a rundown at the end of their games. When CNN offered Headline News, however, we could see updated scores at 20 and 50 minutes after the hour. Imagine having to wait 20 minutes to find out if the Cowboys won because (a) the Internet did not exist, and (b) 60 Minutes had already started and you had missed the NFL Today’s postgame show. This was better, though, than having to wait until the 10:00 news or until you received the morning paper on Monday.

* ESPN Primetime: This show took a little bit of time to take off, but by the end of the 1980s, it was as important as the broadcasts themselves. Say what you want about Chris Berman and Tom Jackson, but they offered the highlights in a way that was worth watching no matter how repetitive Berman could be with his nicknames and such. The show changed a bit over the years (e.g., four man booth, running 45 minutes instead of an hour), but it was always the best part of the day. NFL Blitz doesn’t really compare.

Twelve years or so ago, Sunday night on ESPN featured ESPN Primetime, the Sunday night game (shared for a while between ESPN and TNT), SportsCenter (when it was good), a replay of ESPN Primetime, SportsCenter again, and two NFL Films features. And it simply did not get old.

Current Football Programming on Sunday Night

When NBC acquired the Sunday night package last year, everything changed. ESPN could no longer offer Primetime, and so now you get either NBC’s Football Night in America or NFL Network’s GameDay. Both are inferior to the old Primetime, in my opinion. On NBC, Bob Costas is a shell of what he was on the old NBC, and his presentation often appears to be tongue-in-cheek to the extent that he is annoying. Cris Collinsworth is not bad, but I still prefer Tom Jackson’s analysis of the highlights. The others (Tiki Barber, Jerome Bettis) are simply there. Keith Olbermann is new to the show this year, but he does not offer what he once did on ESPN.

As for GameDay, Rich Eisen was a pretty good SportsCenter anchor and is fairly entertaining with this highlight show. Deion Sanders has toned down his act this year, and Steve Mariucci is acceptable as the straightforward analyst. To be sure, this is not a bad show, but it is replayed so many times that at some point, you have to turn the channel no matter how big of a fan you are. And this is directly related to the biggest overall problem with the network: it simply does not take advantage of the numerous possibilities, especially given that the network has access to the entire NFL Films library.

Other NFL Network Programs

The highlight of the programs on NFL Network during the week is NFL Replay, which shows the broadcasts of the better games during the previous weekend in 90 minutes. Halftime and some other parts of the games are removed to cut down on the time. These are certainly worth watching, but you also only get four or so games from the previous weekend.

NFL Total Access is a news show that repeats much of what you can find on NFL.com and other news sources. Point After shows various press conferences, which is great news for those people who enjoy press conferences. Not sure how many of those people there are. Other shows (Put Up Your Dukes, Playbook) are at best on par with but more honestly inferior to NFL Live on ESPN. I simply cannot sit through some of these shows. If I can, I certainly cannot sit through them more than once, and they will be shown repeatedly.

The draft coverage during the spring is pretty good, being more extensive than what you see elsewhere. If you are a draft freak, this may be reason enough to switch. I would suspect that most people are satisfied with less than what you get on NFL Network.

NFL Films

I am more of a football history nut than most people, but I still cannot understand the decision to avoid using the NFL Films library more liberally as part of the normal programming. The network showed some classic Super Bowls last year (applause), and last summer the network showed some great games from the past several years in a segment known as NFL Classics, but there could be so much more.

“Talent”

Eisen is clearly the most talented person on the network, and it falls off from there. Sanders and Mariucci are limited mostly to GameDay (though Sanders shows up on a few other programs), and that is a shame.

Analyst Jamie Dukes is probably not aware that (a) virtually nobody ever heard of him during his playing days, and (b) we can understand him just fine even if he did not scream into the camera. Really. I have watched Put Up Your Dukes twice, and both times I had to turn it off out of irritation.

The others are either irrelevant voices (Fran Charles, once of Boxing After Dark “fame”) or former players and coaches who lack television experience (Marshall Faulk, Rod Woodson, Terrell Davis, Jim Mora). There are additional names (see here for a complete list), but perhaps you get the idea.

Adam Schefter is a pretty good reporter, but he reminds me of a mix of a wannabe sports agent combined with a former soccer player who thinks he could have played football if he had just tried. Something like that.

Thursday Night Broadcasts

Last season, my cable provider offered NFL Network but could not show the games. Thus, we got to see some very old NFL Films shows (see above, but bad timing) instead of the games. This year, we apparently get those games, but we have to listen to Bryant Gumbel. I have every intention of listening to Brad Sham’s call of the game, but here is a review of Gumbel from Awful Announcing:

I really was genuinely excited for the NFL Network’s return last night. Even though I knew the game probably wasn’t going to be exiting it was still late night Thanksgiving Day Football. I said I was willing to give Bryant Gumbel another chance and this was it.

How did he do you ask??? He failed miserably. If you don’t have the NFL-Network you missed the most boring game I’ve ever seen in my life. Not because of the action on the field but because of Gumbel.

I understand the game was sloppy, and it wasn’t what you wanted for your first game of the year, but could you show me you cared a little bit Bryant!?!? I mean even Chris Collinsworth (who I usually enjoy) was struggling at the end of the contest because you could tell Gumbel just didn’t care. Maybe it’s just his personality, but the guy is about as exciting as watching paint dry. If he showed even an ounce of energy he might be tolerable as a Play by Play guy, but he registers on the opposite end of the spectrum from Gus Johnson. No I take that back Gumbel is like the Highlander. He sucks the viewer’s energy and soul out of them as they watch the game (there can be only one).

Emphasis added to the final sentence, of course.

Bottom Line

The NFL Network essentially offers six hours of programming each day and stretches this programming into a 24-hour period. The benefit of this channel is that if you want to watch NFL programming, you know that you can tune in to NFL Network and it will usually feature something about the NFL (unless the show is about college football). Odds are, however, that if you watch the channel with any regularity, you will have likely already seen the show that is on. The bottom line is that it is a network that focuses so much attention on promoting itself that it does not realize how badly it underachieves.