The 2011 NFL season may be over, but it’s hard to tell with all the football coverage out there. From Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck, toEli’s “elite” status, and free agency, if it weren’t for Linsanity, ESPN could be mistaken for the NFL Network. But why this glut of coverage more than a week after the Super Bowl’s final whistle? It’s easy to say that the NFL and media nurture hype for profit and ratings, but the answer also is in football’s DNA.
Professional football in America is indeed “a rare sport.” The autumnal pastime of our grandparents has evolved, over the last 50 years, into a perpetual entertainment Leviathan. Guts and grit spill across the gridiron from September through January; human drama and analysis drive the action from February through August. “Offseason,” Doug Farrar joked in 2008 when we launched the League. “What’s that?”
For those who cover football, and those who follow it, winter, spring and summer can be as action-packed as autumn — they need to be. The NFL has one of the shortest seasons in sports, if you measure its length by games and weeks. But unlike other sports, average NFL fans don’t tune out after the final game. Traffic spikes on some football Web sites during the offseason; ESPN proudly promotes its coverage of an endless season. The Scouting Combine, Pro Days and the Draft fill the doldrums of winter and spring. Mini-camps, training camps, “Hard Knocks” (yes, it’s coming back), fantasy drafts, and preseason carry fans through the dog days of summer. Toss in the inevitable drama that hounds young, rich athletes, and following the NFL is truly a 365-day proposition.
Though maligned by purists, what happens off the field is just as important to the NFL’s popularity as what happens on it. Scarcity of games drives fan demand for drama, analysis and hype. That ratio of downtime to playtime is part of the DNA of football. A single game is a microcosm of the year. In every three-hour broadcast there are only 60 minutes of actual game time — many of which are spent huddling. The action may seem non-stop but it is episodic; brief forays followed by lengthy analysis.
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