WEEKLY WHINE

NFL 1998: Midterms

Now that we're past the middle of the NFL season, it's time to take a glance at who is performing well and why things are happening. Something out of the ordinary that just happened is worth mentioning. The Tennessee Oilers have settled upon a new name - they will be known as the Titans beginning next year. It's the first time that name has been found in the National Football League - regardless, it's not an entirely original name. A charter member of the American Football League in 1960 was called the New York Titans, but it failed miserably. The team was frequently unable to pay its players, and its facilities were inferior, much like many owners claim when they attempt to suck hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to prevent their teams from moving.

Anyway, there was a team called the Titans in the early 1960s, a team that we know today as the New York Jets. But yesterday, Tennessee owner Bud Adams announced that the Oilers would take this name beginning next season. According to Adams, the Tennessee Titans represent "strength, leadership, and other heroic qualities". Originating from Greek mythology, the name was one of Adams's favourites because Nashville is apparently known as the "Athens of the South", although I must have missed that memo. The team's logo and colours will be revealed in December, and the team will play its first game next season in a new stadium across the Cumberland from downtown Nashville. As for the name "Oilers", it will be the first name retired by the NFL - if another team replaces them in Houston, they won't get the name the way Cleveland will get the Browns back.

In other business, Tuesday marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Heidi game, which last year was voted the most memorable regular season game in the NFL's history, partially because it had such a great ending. However, we remember it not for its ending, but for missing its ending. At the time, it was actually an AFL game, but since the merger, AFL games are also considered NFL games. This game happened to feature the New York Jets in Oakland to meet the Raiders, a matchup between two of the league's best teams that involved a total of eight players, a coach, and an owner who would go on to the Hall of Fame. With 01:05 left, the Jets kicked a field goal to break a 29-29 tie, and Oakland received the ensuing kickoff. At that moment, East Coast clocks struck 19:00. NBC's schedule showed that Heidi was to air at that time, but with a football game going on, that wouldn't happen, would it? Of course it would, this is television. So the film began, but viewers across the nation missed Oakland's quarterback Daryle Lamonica hit Charlie Smith for twenty yards, followed by a 43-yard TD strike to Smith that put the Raiders in front 36-32. Earl Christy fumbled the kickoff, and Preston Ridlehuber recovered it for a touchdown that made it a 43-32 final in favour of Oakland.

How did viewers find out about this? Over twenty minutes after the game's conclusion - and during one of the most poignant scenes of Heidi, no less - NBC ran a ticker indicating the final score, forcing fans to frantically compute the number of times the Raiders must have scored in the last 65 seconds. This situation took place even though NBC executives had just decided to air the game in its entirety. The network's broadcast supervisor, Dick Cline, didn't know this because fans were already calling NBC asking which the network would show, causing their switchboard to blow out. Nobody could reach Cline, so he took the default route of cueing up the film at precisely 19:00 EST. As the black-and-white Swiss girl popped onto the screen, even more fans, this time irate ones, tried and failed to reach NBC.

The Jets and Raiders met again that season - in the AFL Championship Game. The rematch went to the Jets, 27-23, and New York went on to win Super Bowl III in Miami. Another result of the game was that the NFL's broadcast contracts began to include a clause stipulating that folks in team markets would see every second of each of their teams' games, except for blacked out home games. Furthermore, from then on, whenever football went head to head against anything else, football would always win. In fact, this season marks the first time that ESPN carries all Sunday night and Thursday night games, meaning that it would have to switch Sunday Night Baseball to ESPN2. However, Major League Baseball then voided ESPN's rights to those last three games, saying that the contract guaranteed those games.

Also, the NFL has been going fairly well this season.