Posts tagged “college football”

Sportico published a great article this month that should really drive home just how much American football dominates television broadcasting right now. NFL Swallows TV Whole, With 93 of Year’s Top 100 Broadcasts details the stranglehold the NFL has on the country’s advertisers. And three of the remaining top 100 were college games! So really 96 out of 100 broadcasts last year were football.

It’s literally the end of an era. After seven national titles, eleven SEC championships and one hundred and twenty-three players drafted into the NFL, Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban is retiring. College football is not going to see another legend like him for a while. I admire what he did at LSU and Alabama almost as much as I hated when Florida played against him.

Several times when they went to commercial during tonight’s College Football Championship game, ESPN was playing Gimme Shelter from the 1969 Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed. It’s an awesome song. The entire album is fantastic, and I’ve loved it since I was in middle school. I am just having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that a song released five and a half decades ago is still so popular (and well known?) that it works. For comparison, if ESPN had existed in 1969, and if the CFP existed in 1969, they’d be playing Carry Me Back to Old Virginny by Alma Gluck or It’s a Long Way to Tipperary by John McCormack. Those were “hits” right at the start of World War I and — I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here — teenagers at the tail end of the 60s weren’t rocking out to Alma Gluck.

And the Stones are still touring!

I have been watching college football all day and seen approximately 638,915 GOP ads viciously bashing Dems on ESPN, Fox, ABC, etc. and exactly zero ads for Dems period.

The complete lack of urgency from players and coaches, in the NFL and college, when down by two or more scores in Q4, makes me question whether any of these guys have ever played Madden.