The one thing I hate about the Rams game already... (1 Viewer)

[Artifactual]

My first thought on the 3pm kickoff for the Saints/Rams game is that a Noon kickoff would be a 10 a.m. time for the fans in L.A. to watch and the impact of TV ratings.

However, the LAC play at ATL Sunday and the kickoff for that game is 12.00 CST, making it a 10:00 a.m. kickoff for the L.A. market.

Somebody here may be on to something.

 

[wnelson]

Is the damn 3:05PM kickoff time. Thanks, Rams (for nothing).

I'm old enough to remember half our season played at 3pm. I hated the niners more than the rams but just barely. Hell, I still do.

 

[wnelson]

On the brightside... if we play inspired football we will win.

 

[saintmdterps]

Additionally, I’m sure we’ll get to see the “no-call” replay a few times. Bastages.

I don’t think so. That would mean the NFL would have to acknowledge its incompetence which will not happen

**** the NFL

 

[DaveXA]

New York City/metro absolutely deals with “who’s the home team, and how does this affect the local TV schedule” every single week. If the Giants are at home on 1, the Jets are most likely to be a) going somewhere else and playing at a different time; b) on a bye week; or c) their opponent. The Jets are definitely not going to be at home at any point that Sunday, and probably won’t be the home team on any alternate date either unless they burn a home team designation playing in London or Timbuktu or wherever Rog wants an NFL game. This is the foremost drawback to sharing a stadium, and now the NFL’s two largest media markets’ teams all do it.

They don't deal with it every week. The schedule is determined well before the season starts and the schedulers and teams know the situation in terms of logistics of two teams at 1 stadium. It's not really relevant to setting the the start time at 3 pm. There's no legitimate reason for then to set is at 3 pm in this case, even considering the Bayou Classic. The noon (1 pm ET) start time was used before in a home game the day after the BC, so that's not really a reason. No matter how you parse it, this was an arbitrary decision made by the schedulers. The only question is whether we think it was intentional or not.

I hope it doesn’t impact the game either but the more devious thing to do is to play the west coast team traveling east in the early kick slots, especially now that bindings by division are less strenuous.

All told, I’m struggling to get to the conclusion of “the NFL is wrong for what it did to the Saints” here.

Almost all west coast trips to the east coast are in the 1 pm time slots. The 4 pm slot isn't anywhere near the norm as already been pointed out.

I'm not saying it's devious because I'm not privy to what goes on behind the scenes, but considering numerous actions that the NFL has taken against teams who haven't towed the company lines on a number of issues, and Goodell's penchant for being petty and vindictive, it's not a stretch to think there's something to the trends.

 

[RJS]

NFC West number of games by team in the 1:00 Eastern slot this year:

49ers - 2
Seahawks - 3
Rams - 3
Cardinals - 4

That doesn't seem like it favors the Rams. Let's hope the fans in the dome are lubricated loud and turn it into more of a home field advantage.

 

[DaveXA]

My first thought on the 3pm kickoff for the Saints/Rams game is that a Noon kickoff would be a 10 a.m. time for the fans in L.A. to watch and the impact of TV ratings.

However, the LAC play at ATL Sunday and the kickoff for that game is 12.00 CST, making it a 10:00 a.m. kickoff for the L.A. market.

Somebody here may be on to something.

The early start times for west coast teams traveling to the east coast is the rule, not the exception.

 

[RaginSaint93]

On the bright side at least I get to watch redzone at noon

 

[Saint KayBee]

They don't deal with it every week. The schedule is determined well before the season starts and the schedulers and teams know the situation in terms of logistics of two teams at 1 stadium.

That’s what “dealing with it” is, Dave. I don’t know you to be so pedantic - why now?

It's not really relevant to setting the the start time at 3 pm.

Yes it is. One team gets the morning kick (west coast parlance, as the game begins at 10am their time) one team gets the afternoon kick (1pm). The exception is when one of the LA/NY market teams plays on not-Sunday, then the viewing market is usually given the mid-slot Game of the Week. They do this juggling act for all eighteen weeks of the season to capture as much of the combined ~35 million viewer market as possible for LA/NY, whether the local team(s) are on or not.

The long-held CBS/FOX split along conference lines has a lot to do with it. It’s less rigid now, but FOX outbid CBS for all NFC road games in 1994, and NBC was outbid by CBS four years later for all AFC road games.

There's no legitimate reason for then to set is at 3 pm in this case, even considering the Bayou Classic.

Both teams cannot be served to the Los Angeles market at 10am local time. It creates viewership conflict which squashes ratings. I don’t know what else to tell you. The Chargers are going an extra time zone over and were also not expected to be as good, which is why it’s a B-level game, being shown only to Atlanta metro, Los Angeles metro, and up the west coast to Eugene (because Justin Herbert).

The noon (1 pm ET) start time was used before in a home game the day after the BC, so that's not really a reason.

Once in thirty years, I already demonstrated that. The league also probably heard from Superdome operations staff about how strenuous that stadium turnaround was.

No matter how you parse it, this was an arbitrary decision made by the schedulers. The only question is whether we think it was intentional or not.

1/272 is statistically insignificant

Almost all west coast trips to the east coast are in the 1 pm time slots. The 4 pm slot isn't anywhere near the norm as already been pointed out.

I’m doing a deeper look at this and don’t have enough to prove anything either way, but I’m finding that opponent prestige and potential matchup stakes are impacting kick times. I just made up a statistic called WCRTSNEK (west coast, road trip, Sunday, non-early kickoff) and entering this week’s games, the Rams will have two such games (a 26-20 OT loss on SNF @ DET in week 1, Sunday mid @ NO this week). San Fran has played one (38-10 loss to GB, kicked at 4:25) and are scheduled for a 4:25pm kick @ MIA in week 16. Seattle and Arizona don’t get to do it at all this season. Looking at the AFC, the Raiders and Chargers don’t get any either. The best chance either AFC team may have had, in a vacuum, was week 3’s LAC@PIT game, but CBS was already carrying MIA@SEA and CAR@LVR, which both had to be second slot kicks. Again demonstrating that these things are rarely as simple as “just put it over there instead, they won’t notice” - and also, in order for the west coast team to get the late kick, they have to have some prestige, and so does their opponent, but it probably means the opponent is going to win because they have to be good enough and well-liked enough to get that draw in the first place. SF-GB was game of the week.

I'm not saying it's devious because I'm not privy to what goes on behind the scenes, but considering numerous actions that the NFL has taken against teams who haven't towed the company lines on a number of issues, and Goodell's penchant for being petty and vindictive, it's not a stretch to think there's something to the trends.

I’m just not able to get here, and in looking up this stuff to reply with more information instead of hoping to have a feeling confirmed, I’ve probably been pushed further away from this conclusion.

Big thanks to pro football reference for easily-sortable team season schedules and 506sports for their tv market maps, both of which helped me learn more about this topic.

 

[Consigliere]

The other thing to hate about today's game is that they will show the no-call several times.

 

[DaveXA]

That’s what “dealing with it” is, Dave. I don’t know you to be so pedantic - why now?

Maybe it's pedantic, whatever, but moving on.

Yes it is. One team gets the morning kick (west coast parlance, as the game begins at 10am their time) one team gets the afternoon kick (1pm). The exception is when one of the LA/NY market teams plays on not-Sunday, then the viewing market is usually given the mid-slot Game of the Week. They do this juggling act for all eighteen weeks of the season to capture as much of the combined ~35 million viewer market as possible for LA/NY, whether the local team(s) are on or not.

Yes, they do the juggling act when they set the schedule before the season for all 18 weeks of the schedule. The way I originally read it was they deal with it every week during the season, which is obviously not the case. That was just me misreading your phrasing. My contention is simply that west coast teams getting the 1 pm ET kickoff vs east coast teams is the norm, and the 4 pm kickoff is the exception. Now I grant that the NY and LA teams being in the same market does make scheduling a little more complicated, but there are 5 and up to 6 time slots to choose from in a normal given week, and home/away games are also factored in.

The long-held CBS/FOX split along conference lines has a lot to do with it. It’s less rigid now, but FOX outbid CBS for all NFC road games in 1994, and NBC was outbid by CBS four years later for all AFC road games.

Agreed.

Both teams cannot be served to the Los Angeles market at 10am local time.

Certainly. Of course, they could have flipped the Falcons/Chargers and Rams/Saints start times or run either of the games at one of the other 7 start times this week being there were the 3 start times on TG day and one Friday and the four start times today and tomorrow. But, this is how they drew it up. So, idk.

It creates viewership conflict which squashes ratings. I don’t know what else to tell you.

I didn't argue otherwise.

The Chargers are going an extra time zone over and were also not expected to be as good, which is why it’s a B-level game, being shown only to Atlanta metro, Los Angeles metro, and up the west coast to Eugene (because Justin Herbert).

Yes. And I dunno, it seems the Chargers got the short end of it with the extra time zone over compared to the Rams, but of course, so does other west coast teams making that same trip.

Once in thirty years, I already demonstrated that. The league also probably heard from Superdome operations staff about how strenuous that stadium turnaround was.

Not doubting you, but I wasn't aware the league was told that. And as to the once in 30 years, that's clearly because there were other considerations and scheduling that made the issue moot. You shouldn't count the times where the BC wasn't the day before a given Sunday afternoon game because it had no bearing on the schedule decision-making.

1/272 is statistically insignificant

Where do you get 1/272?

I’m doing a deeper look at this and don’t have enough to prove anything either way, but I’m finding that opponent prestige and potential matchup stakes are impacting kick times. I just made up a statistic called WCRTSNEK (west coast, road trip, Sunday, non-early kickoff) and entering this week’s games, the Rams will have two such games (a 26-20 OT loss on SNF @ DET in week 1, Sunday mid @ NO this week). San Fran has played one (38-10 loss to GB, kicked at 4:25) and are scheduled for a 4:25pm kick @ MIA in week 16. Seattle and Arizona don’t get to do it at all this season. Looking at the AFC, the Raiders and Chargers don’t get any either. The best chance either AFC team may have had, in a vacuum, was week 3’s LAC@PIT game, but CBS was already carrying MIA@SEA and CAR@LVR, which both had to be second slot kicks. Again demonstrating that these things are rarely as simple as “just put it over there instead, they won’t notice” - and also, in order for the west coast team to get the late kick, they have to have some prestige, and so does their opponent, but it probably means the opponent is going to win because they have to be good enough and well-liked enough to get that draw in the first place. SF-GB was game of the week.

A lot of this is determined before the season and the schedulers don't know how a given team will do during the upcoming season. I'm sure there are metrics they use, fan base size, viewership, ticket sales etc that factor in setting the schedule. I'm not saying it's all arbitrary. But I am saying that it wouldn't surprise me that there is definitely some occasional arbitrary decision making going on at times. If the league has an agenda with some teams, they can and do do what they want. It's not that hard.

I’m just not able to get here, and in looking up this stuff to reply with more information instead of hoping to have a feeling confirmed, I’ve probably been pushed further away from this conclusion.

And as I stated, people can come to their own conclusions either way. We all won't come to the same conclusions, and that's perfectly fine.

Big thanks to pro football reference for easily-sortable team season schedules and 506sports for their tv market maps, both of which helped me learn more about this topic.

I appreciate the research. I definitely learned a bit from the discussion.

Who dat!

 

[Saint KayBee]

Certainly. Of course, they could have flipped the Falcons/Chargers and Rams/Saints start times or run either of the games at one of the other 7 start times this week being there were the 3 start times on TG day and one Friday and the four start times today and tomorrow. But, this is how they drew it up. So, idk.

Any other start time other than noon Sunday either flattens the extra rest advantage on the Saints’ side or extends that of the Rams’. Usually the best thing to do is to put the Saints on the road Thanksgiving week and be done with it, but maybe they try not to do that too many years in a row, and when the Saints were more of a prestige team we could benefit from those SNF/MNF draws, like the 2009 Pats game.

Not doubting you, but I wasn't aware the league was told that.

I’m speculating, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Flipping the Dome from Tulane games wasn’t as hard due to lower attendance, but Bayou Classic had an announced gate over 63K, and with the Battle Of The Bands also being in the Superdome on Friday (cheaper tickets + more roaming the concourses between action) that’s two days’ worth of cascading housekeeping efforts. I can’t imagine there being an easy way to pull that off quickly.

Where do you get 1/272?

Up to 16 contests per week (which get dispersed due to bye weeks but is always the ceiling), each team has to play 17 games. 17×16=272

A lot of this is determined before the season and the schedulers don't know how a given team will do during the upcoming season. I'm sure there are metrics they use, fan base size, viewership, ticket sales etc that factor in setting the schedule. I'm not saying it's all arbitrary. But I am saying that it wouldn't surprise me that there is definitely some occasional arbitrary decision making going on at times. If the league has an agenda with some teams, they can and do do what they want. It's not that hard.

They can but I don’t imagine it happens too often. Back in 2014 the Saints played a Sunday night home game against Green Bay then had a Thursday night road game against Carolina four days later. The team complained before and amongst this happening and it hasn’t happened to the Saints since. I can check some other time for all teams since 2015 but I do think this was a pretty significant “oh sh*t” moment for the league schedule writers.

And as I stated, people can come to their own conclusions either way. We all won't come to the same conclusions, and that's perfectly fine.

I appreciate the research. I definitely learned a bit from the discussion.

Who dat!

This was a pretty cool video too.

 

[St. Geezy]

The other thing to hate about today's game is that they will show the no-call several times.

They’ve stayed away from doing that to my surprise. Think it’s viewed as a league embarrassment. They didn’t show or mention it once last year when we played them. Almost makes me wonder if the league asked for that.

 

[AARPSaint]

They should be embarrassed. Ranks right up there with “Beastquake” and the “Minnesota Miracle.” Trying to recall an instance of a great Saints play shown ad nauseam when a rekindling of a matchup occurs, for example, the original tush push of Deuce McAllister when the Saints play the Eagles.

 

[meily]

And we play at home….

That is strange that is a late game home game, I thought we were on the road because of the time.