Professional Football Researchers Association Forum
PFRA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the history of professional football. Formed in 1979, PFRA members include many of the game's foremost historians and writers.
conace21 wrote:The thing I don't like is that it seems it's all too easy for a team to make a big comeback now.
This is up there for something I don't like either. Especially when people freak out and compare it to past comebacks as if it's comparable to Buffalo-Houston. It's not. That was special to watch.
Now, like you said, almost feels expected. Like the Falcons-Patriots in the SB, it wasn't surprising that NE came back, at all.
Also had the exact same feeling as you did about the Bills-Vikings game, which is kind of funny in that the "surprise" nowadays is that the Vikings didn't easily come back -- because I certainly was expecting them to run off at least 3 TD's in 3 quick possessions and have it become the close score, mindless entertainment game than the NFL loves it's games to be now.
Especially when you saw how lopsided the officiating was (and is) in a lot of these Patriots games.
But it's not just them, in a lot of these games when team x is trying to come back on y you will see a lot of calls going x's way. A bad PI flag here a chintzy hold there. It's like the refs are thinking "ok we may have a game here, let's make sure these drives are sustained and the score gets closer"
sheajets wrote:
The stadium experience is almost dead at this point. I look around the league and it's empty seats everywhere.
That's true also for college football as well. Last Saturday I saw my annual college game - this time it was at
historic Franklin Field in Philadelphia. The weather was beautiful and the 50,000+ seat stadium was virtually empty.
Published attendance figure was about 4,500 but I counted less than 2,000. Game was competive between Penn
and Lehigh. There was nearly as many players and coaches as there were fans in the stands.
I would say that High School football is better than when I grew up. Maybe that is the solution for some here.
Part of it is that the skills have improved, but not to the point of boredom as in the NFL. The NFL kickers are great, but they just aren't very interesting. Just too good. At the high school level, most teams now have some sort of kicker who can make a FG. But it's variable, and thus interesting to watch. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s most teams kicked XPs and that was it, regardless of team quality. Even at the college level into the 1980s there were teams who could do better than an XP for kicking. That was not entertaining, then or now.
Same for the passing game. A lot more kids at that level, a lot more teams that have a watchable passing game. It's not going to be the automatic level of the pros, but the teams can pass.
sheajets wrote:
The stadium experience is almost dead at this point. I look around the league and it's empty seats everywhere.
That's true also for college football as well. Last Saturday I saw my annual college game - this time it was at
historic Franklin Field in Philadelphia. The weather was beautiful and the 50,000+ seat stadium was virtually empty.
Published attendance figure was about 4,500 but I counted less than 2,000. Game was competive between Penn
and Lehigh. There was nearly as many players and coaches as there were fans in the stands.
Prices are outrageous too for the pro game. Not certain how it is in college overall but your example is quite jarring.
With the beautiful super 4k high res whatever TV's that are out there people would just rather stay home, especially when you factor in work the following day, traffic etc.
Not sure if this will rebound or will we see this become the new normal where stadiums are going to be scaled down to improve optics (as the Redskins, Dolphins, Raiders and Browns, and Patriots have done)
General admission for the Penn-Lehigh game was $20 - a little bit more than other college games I've been to.
Of course my round trip Amtrak trip from NYC was $102 but it was better than driving to Philly.
John Grasso wrote:General admission for the Penn-Lehigh game was $20 - a little bit more than other college games I've been to.
Of course my round trip Amtrak trip from NYC was $102 but it was better than driving to Philly.
I wouldn't say Penn is a typical experience, it's an Ivy league school that also lacks a real history - yes, yes, I know Concrete Charlie, but it's not Harvard or Yale. And at Penn the student body these days is by and large foreign and have no attachment to the game of Football at all, I wonder how much this has to do with certain selected colleges no longer having rabid student cheering sections? That said it's an absolutely gorgeous place to watch a game, Franklin Field. I wonder if something like having the Eagles play a game there might be a nice - albeit gimmicky - change of pace, almost like the NHL's Winter Classic. Maybe Philly plays a game in Franklin Field, the Cowboys in the Cotton Bowl, the Dolphins in the Orange Bowl, etc. Gimicky as it is, I'd be interested in attending any of those! Let me know if you plan another trip John, it's a mile and a half from my house!
I think Penn edges in with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and turns the big 3 into the big 4, so there's history there, but very early history. No idea what normal attendance would be for an Ivy League game though. I do think student body makeup matters. The big state schools tend to do quite well and also have large undergraduate populations and a local economy largely dependent on the school for everything including entertainment, so you get good attendance. A school in a more urban area like Pitt with a student body makeup such that graduate and professional students outnumber undergrads combined with many years of losing, you wind up with an attendance issue.
Totally agree. This is NOT the same game I grew up and fell in love with in the early 1970's. The game is so pussyfied- pardon my French, it's really sad, in my opinion. The way they protect QB's today is sickening. Nothing but greed and the all mighty dollar. The way defenses are so limited now is a joke as well. Free agency is another thing I hate. I used to love watching all the games I could, I still do but with not near the same enthusiasm as I once had. TD celebrations are a joke and if a player did something like that in the old days, he would be taken out of the game by the other team. Players celebrating a first down especially when their team is down like 35-0. Limited the number of practices a team can have, etc. Then you have the players themselves throwing a tantrum on the sidelines or acting like jackasses.
MIKEBENNIDICT wrote:I don't see the big deal. Perhaps it's possible that maybe you're allowing yourself to get to into the game when you focus on all these minor stuff.
I'm with you. I don't share the "thing were better in the olden days" mentality
