The NFL season kicks off tonight, and the rest of the sporting world is making space. There are seven baseball games, one the second half of a doubleheader which was unplanned when the MLB schedule’s seeds were planted. Only three of the originally scheduled games conflict with the Bills and Rams. There are no college football games.
It’s possible the baseball side of this is coincidence, but if it isn’t, it’s wise. The NFL’s power dominates that of Major League Baseball in media markets, bringing in roughly five times the advertising revenue despite featuring roughly one-tenth the games. There are plenty of seasonal and other factors at play—this doesn’t mean we collectively like the NFL fifty times as much as we like baseball—but we do give a lot of attention to the NFL. Interest ebbs and flows, and the NFL has its issues, and in certain years the trends do look negative, but when you’re four times as big as the next biggest American sporting entities (college football and the NBA), you’re big. The NFL is big. We gather for the Super Bowl on a level unlike that for any holiday save Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve. We use fantasy football as a way to stay in touch with friends. We give quarterbacks space in our tabloids. Americans integrate professional football more fully into culture than we do any other sport.
Why is this the case? There are probably three reasons, and the first derives from the last two.
The first is that, just as college football possesses at a more concentrated level, there’s a tribalism inherent to the NFL. The Eagles aren’t just the Eagles: They’re Philly. The Packers aren’t just the Packers: They’re Wisconsin. The Browns aren’t just the Browns: For better or worse, they’re Cleveland. This occurs with differing intensity in different locales, but for many, an NFL team signifies home, and unlike college affiliations, these ties pass on from generation to generation independently of social mobility and the tuition bubble. It’s not uncommon, in the most powerful advertising target demographic, for a young adult to have attended a different college from their parents, and for their parents’ parents to not have attended college at all, and for all three generations to share the same favorite professional football team.
The second is that the NFL has created a compelling product out of itself. The cycle between competitive relevance and irrelevance is short. Games exclusively take place at the time when the most powerful advertising target demographic is not at work. There are a maximum of sixteen games a week, and perhaps six or ten a week of significance to the outcome of the league’s season at large.
The third is that football, as a sport, is the easiest thing to follow in the world. Games happen on a regular cadence, and they only happen once a week, making the time commitment minimal to follow a team in detail. Quarterbacks—and this is much truer in the NFL than college—rule the day, making it easy to know the league well if you know even just two dozen players. The pace of games is such that action is constant but breaks are frequent. Helmets are shiny. It’s no wonder this became the sport we landed upon as the source of our societal banners.
So, welcome back to the NFL. We’ll watch. We’ll pay attention. For our families, and for our friendships, and because it’s so easy that it’s hard not to. The Rams play the Bills tonight. But if you have some level of sporting interest (which I’d guess is most of the people reading these notes), you probably already know that.
A Realignment Bit
Brett Yormark (Big 12 commissioner) made an appearance yesterday at Cincinnati (incoming Big 12 school), and he was predictably asked about expansion. The two questions I’ve seen reported on are 1) what schools would be good additions and 2) whether the Big 12 and Big Ten were competing over any Pac-10 schools.
The answer to 2), rather transparently, was no, which tracks. No Pac-10 school would choose the Big 12 over the Big Ten. No Big 12 school would choose the Big 12 over the Big Ten. That is a concrete truth, and in some ways it makes Yormark’s job easier. He mentioned Kevin Warren (Big Ten commissioner) as a friend, and even if there isn’t some wacky alliance there (I’m guessing Warren is also friends with that guy who runs the Pac-12, though after The Alliance, maybe not), Warren would be a useful friend for a guy looking to expand his conference. Warren knows a lot about expansion. He also knows a lot about the schools in which Yormark might be interested. Which brings us back to 1).
The answer to 1) was, summarized, that Yormark wants schools in the Pacific Time Zone with strong football and basketball with national recognition who—and this is noteworthy—are a good cultural fit. The strong football and basketball is subjective and wavers. The national recognition is subjective and wavers. But the cultural fit is interesting, because it would seem to steer away from a partnership with Stanford, and potentially with Cal, and the Pacific Time Zone fit lessens the value of Utah, Colorado, and kind of the Arizona schools (Daylight Savings Time is weird) in Yormark’s eyes. He effectively is saying that he wants Oregon and Washington. Which he should. Those would be good schools to acquire. It doesn’t negate Utah’s value, or the value of the Arizona schools, or even Colorado’s value (Colorado is a relatively low-revenue program, but I’d imagine the Big 12 would still like a presence in Denver just fine), but it does signify, with surprising clarity, that Oregon and Washington are the wish list.
All that said, the fact Yormark’s talking about this publicly makes me think no movement is imminent. This sounds theoretical. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing someone on the verge of adding two or four or six or eight schools would say.
Late-Inning Drama
Today should be quiet in Major League Baseball.
Yesterday wasn’t.
AL East
The Yankees need wins, and they got two of them against the Twins, the first coming in a debacle of an extra-inning game which featured Oswaldo Cabrera throwing out Gilberto Celestino at home, the Yankees failing to score with the bases loaded and nobody out, the Twins failing to pile on with Carlos Correa up and the bases loaded with one out, and ultimately Isiah Kiner-Falefa singling home the tying run then stealing second before scoring the winning run. The second didn’t feature such drama, but it counted the same in the standings. Even with the Rays and Jays both winning, the Yankees are on top in the AL East by an additional half a game, and Aaron Judge is now up to 55 home runs on the season. The Rays did get Brandon Lowe back from the injured list.
NL Central
For the Cardinals, wins are a little superfluous right now, but scoring five in the bottom of the ninth to walk a game off, 6-5, is helpful just the same. That’s the kind of thing it’s nice to be reminded is possible. It can’t hurt. It was Tommy Edman who came through with the walk-off, two-out, two-run double.
AL Central
With the Twins losing twice, the opportunity was there for Cleveland to twist the knife a degree or two, but Emmanuel Clase walked back-to-back batters to start the ninth, leading the Royals to tie and win what had been a 1-0 game in the Guardians’ favor. With the White Sox scoring six off Luis Castillo to best the Mariners, the division’s all shaken up, with Cleveland now two games ahead of both Minnesota and Chicago (each of whom remains, barring shock, out of the Wild Card race).
Starting the game for the Sox was Michael Kopech, who’s now off the IL after the infamous knee injury many speculated Tony La Russa worsened. Not a great outing—he didn’t get through the fourth inning—but four strikeouts and two walks against eighteen batters isn’t bad.
NL East
No drama for the Mets, who swept a double header with the Pirates by an aggregate score of 15-1. Even with Atlanta winning again in Oakland, the Mets are back ahead in the NL East by half a game, and they’ve got the easier trip this weekend, playing in Miami rather than Seattle.
NL Wild Card
The Padres and Phillies won, the Brewers lost. We’re getting close to locking in our six playoff teams in the NL, with questions only regarding which of the Pads and Phils will be the five-seed and which of New York and Atlanta will win the East.
The Cubs
I alternate between liking this year’s players/feeling optimistic about what this team can do with some good action in free agency and feeling woeful about how far this roster is from contention. Last night, Aristedes Aquino smoked the Cubs. That isn’t fun.
Reverse NIL
Iowa State’s NIL group, the “We Will Collective,” announced today that the Cyclones men’s basketball team will put on a free clinic for first through sixth-graders in West Des Moines next Wednesday. It’s aimed at kids from organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the YMCA, it comes with a free t-shirt, and it’s the kind of thing Iowa State’s smart to do. Turn kids into Iowa State fans. Turn every kid you can into an Iowa State fan. That helps everything. And Iowa State owning a larger fanbase share of Des Moines would bear dividends throughout sports.
What’s Up with Allen Lazard?
Allen Lazard was the only Packer listed as not having practiced on yesterday’s injury report, and he’s evidently nursing some sort of ankle injury after being stepped on in practice last week. That is bad. The wide receiver corps is thin. It has upside, but that comes with downside, and Lazard had one of the lowest downsides on the roster.
The list of players limited in practice went: David Bakhtiari, Elgton Jenkins, Robert Tonyan, Darnell Savage. All names to keep an eye on.
FPI?
We started our NFL futures campaign today, and we chose ESPN’s FPI as the model for our basis. It’s a semi-arbitrary choice. We have a high opinion of ESPN’s FPI for college football (its game-to-game stuff, not its playoff predictions), we don’t know of a better option that’s as easy to access. The fact it was somewhat arbitrary, though, speaks to our general idea with these futures portfolios. The model is, of course, important. You want a good model, identifying good value. But with how variable futures markets are, day-to-day and week-to-week, our hypothesis is that the approach to portfolio construction is also important, and can make up for some weakness in the model of choice. Choosing when to go deep, when to go wide, when to pair conflicting bets—all of this is a big deal, and our hope is that it makes us just as successful with models where we have less confidence (like SPI, for soccer, which is a great model but seems far behind the market in a lot of obvious senses) as we are with models where we have more confidence (God bless FanGraphs). Lots of learning ahead, I’m sure. Both as bettors and modelers.
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Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics (we like tennis and will get to tennis one day, but we are not following it closely at this point in the life of this blog):
- 1:15 PM EDT: Washington @ St. Louis, Gray vs. Wainwright (MLB TV)
- 2:20 PM EDT: Cincinnati @ Cubs, Cessa vs. Sampson (MLB TV)
- 4:10 PM EDT: San Francisco @ Milwaukee – Game 1, Alexander vs. Burnes (MLB TV)
- 6:45 PM EDT: Miami @ Philadelphia, Alcantara vs. Gibson (MLB TV)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Minnesota @ New York (AL), Gray vs. Cortes (MLB TV/ESPN+)
- 7:40 PM EDT: San Francisco @ Milwaukee – Game 2, TBD vs. Peralta (MLB TV)
- 8:20 PM EDT: Buffalo @ Los Angeles Rams (NBC)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Chicago (AL) @ Oakland, Cease vs. Sears (MLB TV)
