Again, viewer discretion adv.. FUCK THE RED HAT GUY. Sorry I couldn’t keep that in any longer. Do you guys know who I’m talking about? The guy in the red hat? The son of a bitch who walks on the field every 30 seconds so ESPN can collect a billion dollars from gorram Gatorade ad revenue. You know who benefits from this? Not the fans that are freezing their asses off watching a game that was statistically over an hour and a half ago.* Not the stadium staff (including many volunteers) who are hoping they don’t get pelted by another hail storm. Not the players who ARE the product that is generating the ad revenue, because they don’t see a dime** So who? Here’s a hint: It’s the same jackass who decided to let Rutgers into the Big Ten.
I’m not saying there should be no commercials during college football. Just be smarter about it. You’ve got the weather reports. If it’s 2:30 pm, it’s the 3rd quarter and there’s a monsoon coming at 3:30 let’s move the game along. It’s not like there aren’t eighteen other games you show to fill the time slot. Last week the Michigan vs Rutgers game was moving refreshingly quickly. The game should have been over in 2.5 – 3 hours. Then some BTN dipshit decided they needed to make up for lost (gained?) time and play a thousand commercials in the 4th quarter. At one point there were 3 commercial breaks within 9 seconds of football time and 4 minutes of real time***. THREE! This week there was never more than 5 minutes of football time and never more than 9 minutes of real time between commercial breaks. This was after the game was delayed an hour due to weather. I’m gonna guess you’d been showing 90% commercials during that delay… just let the game end. In both of these cases wouldn’t it be better to let the boring “all-but-over” game end and then cut to a game that some of your viewers might actually want to watch?
There has to be a better solution to this. Soccer is stupid but they manage to cram 90 minutes of game time with limited-to-no commercial interruptions. Anybody watch the baseball playoffs? No? Well you should have because baseball is America and JV is awesome! Did you see those 2-5 second split screen Duracell ads they were using? You get ads while still being able to see what’s going on between pitches. The game doesn’t have to stop. You could do that during every huddle and have the same or more commercial time while still finishing an hour earlier. Dear Doritos/Pepsi/Coke/Bud Light: If you come out and publicly demand advertising in exclusively this format I will buy exclusively buy your products**** You could still show full commercials between quarters and at half-time.
You know what you can do with the extra hour this format would provide? You can schedule more games with less overlap. Viewers won’t have to choose between watching Penn State blow it against OSU and MSU almost making a late game comeback. Fans at the game can get home and turn on their TVs sooner to catch their rivals’ games. All of this means better ratings which means more ad money. People want to watch other games, that’s why NFL Red Zone exists.***** Everybody wins!
Now I know what you’re thinking. 1. “Yeah, that’s a really good idea! They should pay you, like, tons of money to make better decisions about things”, 2. “Oh come on, lay off the Red Hat Guy. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t make the programming schedule.” 3. “This sounds a lot like a topic from mgoblog this week.. are you plaigiarizing?” Well:
3. That’s not how you spell that. And yeah they talked about it too, but it’s not like “too many commercials” is an original thought. If you know me I’ve been bitching about this in football and basketball for years. I did borrow some of their game time stats along with making some up that seemed accurate… never let the facts get in the way of a good story. I can’t be mad and rant about the same topic they do? To paraphrase Dane Cook, It’s not like Louis CK is the only one who’s ever had an itchy asshole.
2. But what if all of the Red Hat Guys stood up to ESPN and Fox and BTN (they’d get fired). What if they were like “you know what, I just walked out there 10 seconds ago. My legs need a rest. Let’s watch some football!” (They’d get fired) What if they all started wearing blue hats? (they’d… probably be told to wear the red hat… and then get fired). But we’d all love them for it! They’d be heroes! There would be Red Hat Guy signs, Red Hat Guy T-Shirts, Red Hat Guy… Hats. We’d be screaming “Red Hat Guy for pres… ” wait… forget that last part.
1. Thanks!
*To be fair, it would only have been over for the past 45 minutes if it weren’t for that SONOVABITCHINDERDHERT!>?!?@
**Well, unless they play for Alabama. Then they get some of this money.
***Football time is time elapsed on the game clock. Real time is time elapsed (on the that thing on your wrist/in your pocket/on which you are reading this) while the TV is showing actual football and/or a dumbass ex-general manager saying something wrong about the last play or an injury or the sandwich he had for lunch. Also I didn’t fact check these numbers but the review-td-kickoff combinations often aren’t too far off.
****Except Bud Light… I like real beer too much to make that promise. But I might buy it instead of Coors when I need something cheap.
*****Ok Red Zone exists because of Fantasy Football and there are way too many teams/players make fantasy college football relevant… If only there were some other type of weekly competition that would make otherwise boring irrelevant games compelling to watch… Oh Hey! Welcome to BigTenElimination.com!