`It's Not Pretty Football'

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 3, 2000 | by Bob Cohn

Free agency and the salary cap have brought parity to the National Football League, according to boosters. Expansion and incessant injury have brought mediocrity, say detractors.

Wherever he is -- perhaps enjoying a cocktail and hot hors d'oeuvres in that big luxury box in the sky -- the late Pete Rozelle is loving this. As commissioner of the National Football League, or NFL, from 1960 until 1989, the forward-thinking Rozelle oversaw the greatest surge in popularity and growth of any American team sport. His league became household initials, must-see TV, a monolith of advertising and marketing genius.

Such is Rozelle's legacy, and a cornerstone of that legacy is that all teams are created equal. Through revenue sharing, each team gets an equal slice of the television pie, currently worth $17.6 billion over six years. That, along with the salary cap, free agency and schedules, helped ensure parity. Playing fields might be grass or artificial, but at least they would be level -- as opposed to Major League Baseball, where last season's postseason slots were filled by eight of the top 10 payrolls.

The 1999 NFL season certainly is no exception to the Rozelle rule. Indeed, this season is destined to be remembered as the one in which down was up and up was down, in which have-nots became haves overnight and the phrase "on any given Sunday" was taken to new, and some say ridiculous, lengths.

"I think our system is very conducive to parity," says St. Louis Rams president John Shaw. But parity, according to many observers, is the wrong word. Add talent-diluting, depth-stripping expansion to the mix and the correct word is ... mediocrity.

"Not only are there no dominant teams, you are beginning to wonder if there are any good teams," writes one Milwaukee columnist. One NFL Internet scribe complains, "Sorry, I'm having trouble celebrating the 1999 season as it stands now. I don't care what anybody says, this has not been pretty football. It has even been bad football."

Most of that bad football is being played in the National Football Conference, or NFC -- specifically in the NFC East, where the Washington Redskins occupy first place despite a defense that ranks last in the entire league. Games are tougher to figure before they're played, and the outcomes are more in doubt when they are. In 33 of the league's first 160 games, the winning team went ahead in the last two minutes or in overtime. That happened 38 times in all of last year. More than 30 percent of all games this year have been decided by three points or less and nearly half by seven points or less.

The San Francisco 49ers, one of the league's glamour franchises going back to the 1980s, are 3-7 and in a general state of disrepair. The Rams, the second-losingest team of the decade, are on the rise. Of the four teams that played for the conference championship last season -- two-time Super Bowl champion Denver, the New York Jets, Atlanta and Minnesota -- only Minnesota has a real chance of making the playoffs.

Parity or mediocrity? "How about competitiveness?" shouts George Young into the telephone. He has been asked the question before, and he does not like it. Since stepping down as general manager of the New York Giants and joining the league as senior vice president of football operations, Young has dropped a lot of weight but none of his characteristic bluster. "All of a sudden, parity is mediocrity?" Young asks rhetorically. "It's more competitive. More new teams are winning. What's wrong with that? I thought America is for the underdog, and this year the dogs are really barking."

Fans seem to like competition. Television ratings are slightly up from 1998 for all three networks -- CBS, Fox and ESPN -- that broadcast the games. "I don't think you can look at it as mediocrity," says Fox executive producer Ed Goren, the No. 2 executive in the network sports division. "If somebody's winning 31-28, where's the mediocrity in that? We said at a seminar in July that this would be the most unpredictable season in NFL history. The danger is that normally in the NFL you can identify the best team at this point in time. I don't think you can."

Charley Casserly, former Redskins general manager now providing commentary for ESPN radio, has no trouble coming up with intriguing games each week. "I think there's a lot of good football being played, a lot of exciting football," says Casserly. "The thing that you have is the top teams from a year ago got knocked out early because of injuries and people had to adjust to teams that have taken their place."

Casserly and others agree that there is "a fine line between winning and losing" and injuries often are responsible for a game's outcome. The Rams remain contenders because their starting quarterback, Kurt Warner, has stayed healthy. On the other hand, the Jets, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Arizona, Miami, Detroit and Chicago all have been affected by quarterback injuries. Denver, of course, lost one of the game's great quarterbacks, John Elway, to retirement.