Do you have an idea for a new sport that would feature some of the greatest athletes in the world, but instead of having the athletes decide the outcome in the final minutes, the game falls into the hands of officials and coaches? Then the American market is right for you. Yes, the United States, home to more than 300m people, seems to love sports that are at their worst at the very end.
Sunday night’s Steelers-Patriots matchup brought in the biggest TV ratings of the 2017 season, with 27m people tuning in to see which AFC power would get the inside track on homefield throughout the conference playoffs. It ended with 27m people, approximately a tenth of the entire US population, being reminded again that they have no idea what it means to catch a ball, one of the most elementary elements in sport.
With 28 seconds left in the game and the Steelers trailing 27-24, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger spotted tight end Jesse James across the middle and hit him in stride with a pass. James caught – excuse me: “caught” – the ball and then lunged forward into the end zone for a game-winning touchdown. Apologies again. I meant: a “game-winning touchdown”. Because upon review, we were all told that what we saw we did not actually see. Due to the NFL’s byzantine catch rules, it was determined James’ “catch” was in fact not a catch, and the “touchdown” was taken off board. The flummoxed Steelers then blew a shot at a tie two plays later when Roethlisberger threw an interception in the end zone. Game over. And, instead of 27m people talking about the game of the year, we got at least that many discussions on why the NFL continues to shoot itself in the foot.
The Patriots have been on the fortunate side of the NFL’s wheel-o-catch rulings so far this season. The James’ ruling broke in their favor. They squeaked by the Jets in back in Week 6 in no small part to another tight end’s touchdown catch, that of Austin Seferian-Jenkins, being determined to not be a catch. And they beat the Texans in the final minute in Week 3 on a Brandin Cooks reception that debatably was less clear of a catch than those by James or Seferian-Jenkins. This is in no way to say that the Patriots get all the breaks. It’s just that it’s easy to think of catch rulings that have swung games all season, and that’s just for one team. There are 31 other teams with similar tales. Ask Dallas Cowboys fans about the Dez Bryant (non-)catch in the playoffs against the Packers in 2015. Or Detroit Lions fans about Calvin Johnson and the many other instances of Lions receivers being robbed of what are clear catches – at least what is considered to be a clear catch everywhere in the world outside of NFL stadiums.
Forty years ago, in Super Bowl XII, this was considered a catch:
Matt Maiocco
(@MaioccoNBCS)I miss the good ol’ days of the NFL — like Super Bowl XII — when everybody knew what a catch looked like. pic.twitter.com/mxsbo3BZ5a
Passing has skyrocketed in the last 40 years, while the understanding of what a catch is has plummeted right into the ground like a football in an overturned reception. That Butch Johnson reception from Roger Staubach? It would never stand now. And maybe it shouldn’t. But a multi-billion dollar league with a commissioner making more than $30m a year should be able to hit on a happy medium between that and what we have today. Something between that and replays, referees and rulebooks deciding so many games. Something that melds logic, common sense and the spirit of the game. Something that makes the NFL feel more like a sport than court.
While the American right wing makes the case that NFL ratings are down because of Colin Kaepernick and others kneeling, there’s an argument to be made that others are tuning out because it’s foolish to invest three hours watching a game only to see the outcome determined under the replay hood. If the NFL can’t even explain what a catch is, it’s hard to explain why tens of millions should watch.
The NBA – the second-most popular league in the US – is not experiencing a ratings decline, but basketball does have a similar late-game problem. Unlike in football, video reviews in basketball are usually quick and painless. Officials check a monitor to see if a shot was released before the buzzer and that’s pretty much the end of it. There’s mercifully no debate about whether a player made a “basketball move” before releasing said shot. But the final minute of basketball games is often an excruciating watch. High-flying skill and athleticism starts the game, while the end is a rolling misery of timeouts, intentional fouls and free throws.
The NFL’s catch rule is confusing, but basketball’s flagrant foul rule might even be worse. On page 58 of the NBA’s rule book you find this sentence: “A flagrant foul – penalty (2) is unnecessary and excessive contact committed by a player against an opponent.” But then in every NBA game in which a team is trailing by a few possessions late, you see quite a lot of unnecessary and excessive contact in obviously flagrant attempts to stop the clock and send the other team to the line.
All of the timeouts halt the action even more. NBA teams are allowed six one-minute timeouts per game and one 20-second timeout, with only three eligible to be used in the fourth quarter. But that’s three a team, of course, meaning it’s not rare to see the final minutes of a game hacked apart by six timeouts and an unlimited number of free throws. If a basketball coach doesn’t trust his team to get through a single late-game possession without drawing something up in a timeout, what exactly is the coach doing in practice? Do the coaching in practice. Let the players play during the game. As great as Gregg Popovich or Steve Kerr are, no one is tuning in to see them draw on a whiteboard.
While basketball and football have so much entertainment value from start to almost-finish, the sports can’t get out of their own way in the final minutes. Yet despite that anti-climax that comes far too often, here’s the catch: because the NFL and NBA remain massively profitable businesses, they have little impetus to fix their late-game issues. That’s a catch we can all actually understand.