NFL Does Smart Job Making Good On Super Bowl Seating Debacle

The last thing the NFL PR and operations people needed last night was angry fans. Certainly with all the weather issues and logistical challenges during the week at Jerry’s World, the league couldn’t have foreseen the disaster of 400 fans without seats. Alas, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t sit here.

How can you sell tickets for seats that don’t exist? How can you sell tickets for seats that aren’s safe enough to sit? You trust Jerry Jones. That’s obviously how.

It’s ridiculous that the 100,000 plus seats weren’t enough for the league that they — and Jones — had to squeeze in extra seating. It’s a disaster and it should always be a footnote in the history of this Super Bowl; the Packers beat the Steelers, it snowed all week in Dallas and a fan seating disaster.

Having said that, the league sure has come through with a make-good for the ousted fans. Per NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy:

So the fans who couldn’t be placed in seats got to stand outside and watch the game onREAD MORE

DL520: Super Bowl, Commercials & Do People Just Hate Joe Buck Because It’s Trendy?

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Nick and I talk about the game, but try to focus more of our time on the other stuff…the stuff that’s more fun to debate than a game that was entertaining, but not fantastic by any means. Maybe it’s the “holy crap football might be gone for a long time” depression or the fact that the game featured two teams that you really can’t hate, but it just ended. It was there, it was fun and now it’s over. Congrats, Packers.

So, Nick and I focus on the commercials a lot. Plus, why does everyone pile on Joe Buck so much? Is it a, pardon the pun, pack mentality or is Buck really that terrible an announcer? Doesn’t it feel like ripping Joe Buck just makes people think they’re cool. He’s not that bad, and he’s much better suited for a big game situation than some other announcers who repeatedly make it all about them with over-the-top calls. He’s not the best, but Joe Buck is fine. At some point everyone isREAD MORE

DL510: Cutler, Twitter, BEN, Rodgers, Jets, Football, Super Bowl

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Where is show 509, you ask? Well, it’s a lost episode, for now.

That said, we’re back with show 510 talking about the media talking about Jay Cutler and spending a good amount of time on the fact that people were quick to rip him for “quitting” without finding out the real story. A product of the immediacy of Twitter, or more a story about the other shoe dropping on a guy most in the NFL really, really don’t like?

And can we please stop with the Philip Rivers comparisons? Rivers was terrible in the AFC title game he played with a torn ACL. It’s also hilarious that Maurice Jones-Drew had the guts to rip Cutler, saying, “All I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee… I played the whole season on one…”

Really, MJD? The WHOLE season? In what amounted to a playoff game in week 15, Jones-Drew had six second-half touches (three run, three pass) for 16 yards. The lesson: being hurt and playing poorly isREAD MORE

Call of the Day: “Bobby Convey Has Stunned This Crowd.” Super Exciting MLS Playoff Highlights (VIDEO)

Bobby Convey had himself one helluva night at Red Bull Arena to help the San Jose Earthquakes past Red Bull New York in the first leg of the MLS playoffs.

I know that clipping up and re-posting MLS clips isn’t going to break any pageview records, but this is worth watching. it’s five-plus minutes of some really entertaining soccer action.

I’m usually not a huge fan of the world of JP Dellacamera and, frankly, only taped the game because I was under the assumption that Ian Darke was calling this match, but to his credit, Dellacamera came through with a really solid call of the match. His goal calls, above, were as solid as any.

John Harkes, on the other hand, just…talks. He just talks way too much. It’s amazing how much he talks. Don’t believe me? Try and cut up a clip and see how little time he takes between points. He doesn’t even breathe. On a telecast with no commercials, Harkes has to put in more words than any analyst in the country per event. ItREAD MORE

Take That, Peyton, Gruden & Monday Night Football. Baseball Wins The Night

Peyton Manning up against a division rival should do a pretty good number on a Monday night, you’d think. Not as good as baseball did yesterday, according to FOX Sports PR man Lou D’Ermilio:

World Series Game 5 did a 10.6/16 overnight and was the highest rated sports event of the night. #mlbonfox #mlb

In other words, WE BEAT ESPN’S NFL GAME THAT HAD PEYTON MANNING IN IT!!!!!

I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s bragging about beating local hockey and basketball games. It is interesting, though, that D’Ermilio doesn’t specifically mention that the clinching game of the World Series beat an NFL telecast. FOX and the NFL have a pretty good relationship, after all. No need to poke the needle at them, even if the tweet was a slight dig at ESPN (and an obvious reaction to the night before when Sunday Night Football crushed Game Four of the World Series.)

And just to show how sports can dictate everything on TV: this will go down as one of the lowest-rated World Series ever, but it stillREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Joe Buck Calls The Final Out of the World Series

I’m fascinated by the public’s reaction to Joe Buck over the last 10 or so years. I can see why football fans don’t like him: he’s kinda smug, cutesy and grew up a “baseball guy” whose now calling their game.

Is it safe to assume that baseball people turned on Buck when he became super-saturated at FOX, doing not just baseball but football, the football pre-game show, commercials for beer…and rental cars…and showing up way more on our TVs than the traditional Saturday afternoon baseball announcer ever did?

So is it that? Did people turn on him when he told Colin Cowherd he doesn’t really like baseball anymore? Or is it just the fact that he’s kinda boring in the booth? If it’s the last one, there are about 200 other play-by-play guys who are just as, if not more, boring than Buck. Did you happen to watch TBS’s coverage this season? People lauded Brian Anderson’s work but he’s just as boring as Buck. Don Orsillo? The guy sounds like he’s calling the action in a mausoleum.

YetREAD MORE

DL465: Anniversaries, World Series, Cliff Lee, Dallas Freakout, McNabb Benching & Notre Dame

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Usually on a busy day I’ll put up a Photoshop collage of all the things Nick and I discuss. Today, you’ll have to listen and read. Sorry.

First, it’s my seventh wedding anniversary today. Time flies when you’re (insert joke here).

We talk about the student manager who died at Notre Dame and what the team should have done (and school will have to do) in the wake of this accident. Nick was a basketball student manager so he adds some insight into the situation from that perspective.

We discuss the World Series and how a bunch of good pitchers, rookies and spare parts are a game away from a parade. It’s inexplicable. Can Cliff Lee save the day in an elimination game in the World Series two years in a row? Will it matter for the Rangers?

We talk about Dallas’s football situation and wonder if people care more about the Rangers this week because they knew the Cowboys were already dead. Still, losing to the Jaguars, who are maybe the worst 4-4READ MORE

Call of the Day: McCarver on Timmy’s Brain Fart, “I Have No Idea What Happened Here.”

Only a play like this could have Tim McCarver spin the phrase, “I have no idea what happened here,” and EVERYONE would agree with him.

WATCH THE VIDEO AT MLB.COM

In the first inning of Game One of the World Series, Tim Lincecum got himself into quite a jam by not capitalizing on a ball that was supposed to get him out of it. We have no idea what happened here.

KNBR: ”He’s running toward third and did Lincecum think it’s a foul ball?”

“He must have. Nobody can believe what they just saw.”

KRLD: ”Lincecum didn’t throw the ball. Young is safe at third, Lincecum had a brain lock. And the bases are loaded with nobody out.”

“Well that is absolutely stunning. And that’s the reaction to this crowd.”

Lincecum got out of the jam and the Giants went on to roll through Cliff Lee and the Rangers so this isn’t much more than a funny story to add some context to the Series when people look back at Game One. Timmy called it a “brain fart,” as you can see byREAD MORE

If News Corp Won’t Sign With Cablevision, Can They Trade Fox to Verizon For Draft Picks?

People who have Cablevision in New York didn’t see Saturday night’s NLCS game between Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum. More importantly for most in that region, they didn’t see the Giants game on Sunday.

Perhaps most importantly, if the negotiations between News Corp and Cablevision don’t become more amicable soon, they may not get to see Glee.

That is when the real panicking starts.

Per the NYT:

About three million households in the New York metropolitan area were left without Fox programming on Saturday and Sunday, preventing sports fans from watching a Phillies game on Saturday night and a Giants game on Sunday afternoon. After months of negotiations, the two companies cannot agree on a price for retransmission of the Fox network.

Cablevision and the News Corporation talked for only a few hours on Sunday, and Fox said they were still far apart. By Sunday evening, television analysts who had predicted a resolution by the kick-off of the Giants game wondered aloud whether the two media giants could drag out the fight until the start of the World Series, which Fox is toREAD MORE

Football Crushes Baseball In Sunday Night Overnight Ratings

The NFL isn’t stupid. Faced with the notion of going up against the NLCS on a Sunday night in mid-October, the football scheduling Gods pulled out Peyton Manning against the Washington Redskins. Any time you include a player like Manning with a rabid — and huge — fanbase like Washington, it’s ratings bonanza for the NFL. So, it stands to reason that the NFL crushed MLB in the primetime ratings on Sunday night, despite the fact that baseball was represented by two bi-coastal metropolises.

From TVbytheNumbers.com:

The 13.2 overnight for “Sunday Night Football” more than doubled the overnight rating for Major League Baseball’s NLCS Game 2 featuring the Philadelphia Phillies victory over the San Francisco Giants (6.5/10). It was the best NFL primetime overnight against an LCS in 13 years, since a 16.4/25 for Cowboys-Redskins on 10/13/97 on ABC.

Certainly the numbers for the baseball will be higher in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Remember, last week the Phillies beat the Eagles on Sunday night, and that was with the Phillies playing on TBS, not FOX. Having said that,READ MORE