October 20, 2014

SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle:

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

posted by huddle to general at 06:00 AM - 6 comments

Love Peter King's explanation of the Rams' punt return TD:

Fassel, who obviously saw in scouting the Seahawks that punter Jon Ryan mostly kicked to his left when trying to pin the opponent deep in its territory, had return man Tavon Austin line up to the punting team's right (Austin's left), and when the ball was punted, Austin faded further to his left, and his protection also went left even though Ryan punted the ball where Fassel thought he would, toward the coffin corner, on the opposite side of the field from Austin. Meanwhile, seven Seahawks charged toward Austin. The punt flew away from the crowd, but Stedman Bailey did just what Fassel had ordered— run down the field where the punt was going, not where the crowd was flowing.

posted by yerfatma at 01:53 PM on October 20, 2014

More discussion of baseball's post-season TV ratings. One thing that would be interesting to look at is the total number of viewers across all games for the post-season. The number of games and the spread to cable dilutes the peaks (and the quality), but are they getting more overall people to watch?

posted by yerfatma at 02:02 PM on October 20, 2014

As relates to baseball on TV, I was traveling last week and in Philadelphia, and my hotel did not have Fox Sports 1 as an in-room channel (although they did end up having it in the hotel bar), meaning I could not watch the Cardinals-Giants games (4 and 5) in my room -- maybe a good thing, seeing as how I could not then damage the hotel room after Matheny's mismanagement in Game 5. Maybe the idea here is that making Fox Sports 1 more "indispensable" means it gets picked up more -- from an anecdotal perspective, it seems to me that more domestic hotels now have NBC Sports Network than did 2 years ago, so maybe once the market gets big enough or public clamor reaches a fever pitch, these networks will become more ubiquitous in terms of being included in basic cable packages and picked up by hotels and the like -- but overall seems pretty non-user-friendly to park these games on Fox Sports 1 to grow that channel's brand and prestige at the expense of viewership numbers instead of having it over on Fox where it can be viewed by basically anyone with a TV (over-the-air or cable/satellite). If I was MLB, I would be kind of pissed off. (With respect to advertisers, hope their ad buys factored in the network's coverage and likely viewership numbers.)

posted by holden at 05:05 PM on October 20, 2014

...but are they getting more overall people to watch?

I have watched much of the postseason, and I have enjoyed it. However, I do not wear overalls, nor do I know very many people who do. Perhaps people who wear overalls are too busy with other things to watch baseball.

posted by Howard_T at 05:09 PM on October 20, 2014

Osh Kosk B'gosh

posted by yerfatma at 08:33 PM on October 20, 2014

There's a local Sunday morning football TV talk show here in the Triangle that is hosted by former ECU head coach Steve Logan and he said during yesterday's show to watch out for Carolina and Cincinnati and how awful they'll be since they had to play a full five periods last week. Sure enough, both teams were awful yesterday. Good thing for you gamblers to take note of.

posted by NoMich at 09:48 PM on October 20, 2014

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