Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 12523870)

One thing I forgot: Billionaire owners holding cities and municipalities hostage regarding stadiums.
...
It's ****ing maddening and ridiculous. **** the Spanos family and all the others.

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 12523641)

The amount of commercials doesn't bother me. The pace of the game doesn't bother me.

What's turned me off this year (which began in 2014) is the hypocrisy of the League Office, especially when it comes to Domestic Violence. Ray Rice wasn't suspended until video footage emerged. Greg Hardy wasn't suspended, despite the fact he had a cache of weapons and beat up his girlfriend. A guy like Tyreek Hill isn't immediately put into a program and suspended to begin his career.

Then of course, there's Roger Goodell's smug ass, the stupid and baseless Deflate-gate, the over officiating of games while moving serious judgment calls to the League Office in NY, which has even more control over the outcome on the field than the refs in the stadium. The non-calls on Alex Smith and Cam Newton and other QB's. Phantom penalties on kick off and punt returns. Absolutely ridiculous PI penalties.

The league has become boring, stagnant and predicutable. When Jeff Fisher is the coach of a team in the #2 market in the US, while having only 6 winning seasons out of 21 (heading for 22), it's clear that it's a "Good Ol' Boys" network. There's no offensive innovation, despite the fact the game is heavily slanted towards the offense in terms of rules and penalties.

There's too many worthless head coaches (Gus Bradley? Fisher? Marvin Lewis? CRAP!). The players aren't allowed to celebrate. The officiating ****ing sucks. Marcus Peters receives a 15 yard Unsportsmanlike penalty for waving his finger, yet I see it time and time again, across the league, and no one's been penalized.

As much as I loved talking about the game, it's just not the same anymore. The Prime Time matchups are awful, as are Sunday Night and Thursday Night games, not to mention London, possible games in Mexico and China along with Saturday games in December.

There's too much over-exposure as well, be it ESPN, Fox and the NFL Network's daily and 'round the clock coverage. Too many players featured in TV commercials.

There's no "mystique" any more.

I'll continue to watch the Chiefs each time they're on the air but as for the rest of the league, I'm just not interested.

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 12523870)

One thing I forgot: Billionaire owners holding cities and municipalities hostage regarding stadiums.

Minnesota did it, Vegas is trying to do it, San Diego is attempting to do it, Atlanta did it and so on. There is absolutely no reason, other than greed, for billionaire owners of NFL teams to insist that local taxpayers fund $1 BILLION dollar + stadiums with the threat of leaving the city if there's no compliance.

It's ****ing maddening and ridiculous. **** the Spanos family and all the others.

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 12523870)

One thing I forgot: Billionaire owners holding cities and municipalities hostage regarding stadiums.

Minnesota did it, Vegas is trying to do it, San Diego is attempting to do it, Atlanta did it and so on. There is absolutely no reason, other than greed, for billionaire owners of NFL teams to insist that local taxpayers fund $1 BILLION dollar + stadiums with the threat of leaving the city if there's no compliance.

It's ****ing maddening and ridiculous. **** the Spanos family and all the others.

Originally Posted by jjchieffan (Post 12523890)

Why should they suspend someone for something that happened long before he was drafted? In what world does and employer hire someone, full well knowing about their past, then immediately suspend them for those actions??? That's just asinine.

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan (Post 12523868)

So all of you guys whining about what's a catch...

Do you want to get rid of instant replay? It used to be the ref would make a split second call on the field and that was it. If the calls were inconsistent, there was no way of telling whether it was because refs had a different idea of what exactly a catch was, or if they just didn't see it correctly in real time.

Now if you have 100 potential catches reviewed, you have to draw some (arbitrary line) and say, for instance, these 50 are catches, but these 50 are not. When a borderline call goes against a homer, homer going to scream (nothing new there).

I like the replay. I think a lot of times they could do it more quickly. I would like to see them experiment with doing it centrally, offsite. I think it could be done more quickly and more uniformly.

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan (Post 12523874)

I don't agree with the complaint about too many flags. If you stop calling the "ticky tacky" stuff, players will just try to get away with more until they do get flagged.

Originally Posted by O.city (Post 12523254)

First, they've gotta make the refs full-time employees. Increase practice time so the product isn't shit.

Honestly, I'd do away with instant replay. Just play it with the eye test.

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 12523983)

Because Domestic Violence is a serious issue in this country and NFL should take a hard line stance against ANY of its players, veteran or rookie, that have been arrested for such a heinous crime.

It's a privilege to play in the NFL, not a right.

Originally Posted by Swanman (Post 12523483)

One thing that is killing my interest is it sure seems like the number of injuries have skyrocketed in the last several years. Fantasy football is one thing keeping interest high in the NFL but I can see that waning as well since half of your fantasy football team is on IR by week 6. Christ, we even have long injury lists for the opening week of the season, I don't remember that being a thing until very recently.

Originally Posted by GoChargers (Post 12523860)

They let Bob Kraft and the Rooneys hand-pick the commissioner that every team has to operate under. They slapped the Patriots on the wrist for cheating twice, even going out of their way to destroy evidence. They've rewritten the rules of the game to favor a handful of marketable glory-boy quarterbacks, and they allow those quarterbacks' teams to get away with anything. They've allowed franchises to rot for decades under horrible owners like Mike Brown, Dan Snyder, Bob McNair, the Spanoses, and the Fords. They sell us on the idea of "parity," then give us a product where it's the Patriots, Broncos, Steelers, Colts, Packers, Cowboys, [insert NFC upstart here] and everyone else, year after year after year. And now they wonder why people are tuning out?

If you're not a fan of a select handful of good-ole'-boy teams, it's almost pointless to even care about this league anymore. The games are no longer won on the field. They're won in the league office, on the committees that lobby Goodell for changes every offseason, and in the owner's box. If you don't have an owner with clout around the league, your team might as well just forfeit the season.

The NBA had a major PR crisis back in the early 2000s because of their boring product, their players' atrocious behavior on and off the court, questionable officiating and the lack of parity in the league. To their credit, they listened to the critics and made changes. It's a whole new league now, with exciting games almost every night and former perennial losers like the Cavs, Clippers and Warriors getting their acts together and competing. Now it's the NFL's turn to face the music.