While some believe the coverage surrounding Deflategate was "essentially a godsend" to the NFL, NBC Sports Chair Mark Lazarus yesterday "was adamant ... that the net wants the focus to be" on the Super Bowl itself, according to Chad Finn of the BOSTON GLOBE. Lazarus said, "Certainly we want people talking about the Super Bowl, but we’d prefer they were talking about football. ... I think more people are talking about it now for unfortunate reasons. We’d much rather be talking football than talking about the inflation, the PSI (pounds of inflation) per square inch of a football.” But Finn writes it is "not necessary to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder whether the NFL was pleased that Deflategate provided a distraction from the league’s more damning issues this season, particularly its inconsistent handling of domestic violence among its players." It is "hard not to notice that there has been an almost systematic, piecemeal revelation of information that has stoked the flames of the story, with reporters who work for networks that are television partners with the NFL breaking small bits of news" (BOSTON GLOBE, 1/28).
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME: SPORTS ON EARTH's Will Leitch wrote while the story of this year's game is Deflategate, the rest of the fans who "care about sports keep wringing our hands about how pointless the story is." Leitch: "The story is not for us. It is being repeated and retold and recast and repackaged because that sort of repetition is vital for a storyline being sold to a mass audience, one unfamiliar with the particulars of these teams otherwise." This is why this story "has been a godsend for the NFL." For the league, Deflategate is a story "from its dreams." It is "about on-field issues, it's ridiculous and it allows the league's executives to cast themselves as the solemn keepers of dignity and fair play." This is "precisely the story the NFL wants." It generates "massive interest, it has clearly delineated heroes and villains and it doesn't involve anything that's actually nefarious, like domestic abuse or severe brain trauma" (SPORTSONEARTH.com, 1/26).
SATURDAY IN THE PARK? THE MMQB's Peter King wrote, "Super Bowl Saturday makes sense." King: "This is a question that I’ve wondered about for a while and the answer always seems to come back that the NFL believes television ratings on Sunday night always will be better than television ratings on Saturday night." It is "very hard to believe that if the Super Bowl were played on a Saturday night that even the casual football fan would say I have something better to do tonight." The specter of the event, in time, "would dictate that the same size crowd would flock to the game on TV if it were played Saturday compared to Sunday" (MMQB.com, 1/27). Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, Scott Pierce writes there is only "one scenario in which more than 100 million Americans don't watch at least part of the Super Bowl, and that's if half the country suffers a power outage during the game." The Super Bowl has "clearly transcended sports." It almost "makes you wonder why networks put so much effort into broadcasting a Super Bowl." NBC could, in theory, "set up a single camera on the 50 yard line and 100 million people would still watch" (SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, 1/28).
