What Channel Is Bengals-Browns?
So yet again I turn on my television to watch an NFL football contest featuring the Cincinnati Bengals, but what do I find? Network broadcasters choose instead to televise within the Louisville market an essentially meaningless Indianapolis Colts game. Despite possessing one of the more storied rivalries in professional football, and even though a victory would earn the Bengals’ opponent their first playoff berth in five years, the Cincinnati Bengals-Cleveland Browns contest amounted to nothing in broadcasters’ eyes.
Why is that? Louisville is only 90 miles from Cincinnati, yet 115 miles (some 27% farther according to GeoBytes) from Indianapolis. Empirically, Louisville should be a Cincinnati town, then, when it comes to major league baseball and football.
Somewhere our culture took a distinct shift for the worse. In a time when Britney’s latest debacle or another socialite’s most recent arrest generates more news coverage than more important issues, we should recognize we’re in trouble.
While no slight is intended toward Colts fans – even if their franchise originated by moving cowardly in the middle of the night under cover of darkness – sports should be about loyalty. But, like other values, win-loss records now rule sports fans’ hearts. No one seems willing to stick out the lean years to will their local team to victory. Instead, it’s much easier to jump ship and join a different winner’s bandwagon.
Such sports fans should be ashamed. The most important sports legacies – the US Olympic team victory over the Soviets, the New York Giants dramatic walk-off homer to win the National League pennant in 1951 and the NFL’s 1967 Ice Bowl Championship Game won by the Green Bay Packers are but three examples – are that much more exalted due to the affinity the long-loyal fan base held for those teams.
Fans should invest emotionally in their teams. That doesn’t mean ranting and raving at poor officiating, calling for the coach’s head after a tough loss or bemoaning a star’s poor performance. No, sports should be equated with investing in a team for the long haul. Victories mean that much more when the winner is truly your team, an entity with whom you’ve enjoyed the ups, downs and in-betweens.
But unfortunately, network broadcasters are all too eager to cater to wishy-washyness in the pursuit of advertising dollars. It’s no longer about your team, the game or the actual physical contest itself. And that’s too bad. I don’t know about any one else, but I’d much rather stick with one team forever, enjoying its outstanding seasons that much more when they occur, than prove fickle willing to jump ship every few years to join a trendy winner.
Why is that? Louisville is only 90 miles from Cincinnati, yet 115 miles (some 27% farther according to GeoBytes) from Indianapolis. Empirically, Louisville should be a Cincinnati town, then, when it comes to major league baseball and football.
Somewhere our culture took a distinct shift for the worse. In a time when Britney’s latest debacle or another socialite’s most recent arrest generates more news coverage than more important issues, we should recognize we’re in trouble.
While no slight is intended toward Colts fans – even if their franchise originated by moving cowardly in the middle of the night under cover of darkness – sports should be about loyalty. But, like other values, win-loss records now rule sports fans’ hearts. No one seems willing to stick out the lean years to will their local team to victory. Instead, it’s much easier to jump ship and join a different winner’s bandwagon.
Such sports fans should be ashamed. The most important sports legacies – the US Olympic team victory over the Soviets, the New York Giants dramatic walk-off homer to win the National League pennant in 1951 and the NFL’s 1967 Ice Bowl Championship Game won by the Green Bay Packers are but three examples – are that much more exalted due to the affinity the long-loyal fan base held for those teams.
Fans should invest emotionally in their teams. That doesn’t mean ranting and raving at poor officiating, calling for the coach’s head after a tough loss or bemoaning a star’s poor performance. No, sports should be equated with investing in a team for the long haul. Victories mean that much more when the winner is truly your team, an entity with whom you’ve enjoyed the ups, downs and in-betweens.
But unfortunately, network broadcasters are all too eager to cater to wishy-washyness in the pursuit of advertising dollars. It’s no longer about your team, the game or the actual physical contest itself. And that’s too bad. I don’t know about any one else, but I’d much rather stick with one team forever, enjoying its outstanding seasons that much more when they occur, than prove fickle willing to jump ship every few years to join a trendy winner.
Labels: cincinnati bengals cleveland browns nfl national football league where art thou
posted by Erik Eckel at 2:55 PM
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