King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NFL technocracy watch: League mulling yet another way to take fans out of the game. Plus: Bummer of a tattoo, kid.

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Jan. 29, 2007 | Welcome to Super Bowl 41 Hype Week II, when the hype gets really hypey.

Prepare yourself for Media Day Tuesday, which will result in 16 stories about football, 379 stories about oddball reporters -- kids, celebrities, talk-show mascots -- doing interviews on Media Day and 2,927 stories about how Media Day has become nothing more than reporters doing stories about reporters doing stories about how Media Day isn't about anything except reporters doing stories about each other.

And then on Wednesday ...

Let's cast our minds forward to Sunday, when between the pregame extravaganza and the postgame celebration, wedged in there somewhere with Prince and the free-spending contestants in the Super Bowl of Advertising, some football will be played.

Think about however many of the first XL Super Bowls you've watched and ask yourself if you've ever been impressed by the in-game stadium atmosphere. I'm guessing not. The Super Bowl stands are filled with corporate fat cats, random rich people chalking up a life experience, friends, fans and functionaries of the other XXX teams and, like little islands in all of that, die-hards for the AFC and NFC champs.

Now compare that with the stadium atmosphere during the best day of the football year, in the parks where the Conference Championship Games are being played. Which do you like better, 75,000 screaming fans pulling for the home team or a small percentage of that number mixed in with a vast majority that's looking forward to seeing Prince?

Well guess what. The NFL would like more games to have crowds more like the Super Bowl crowd. Quiet. Irrelevant.

The league is considering a rule change designed to lessen the effect of crowd noise. It wouldn't be the worst rule change in NFL history. That one, enacted in MCMLXXXIX and still on the books, though rarely enforced, actually punishes rooting for the home team, penalizing the home team if the visiting-team offense can't hear signals because it's too noisy.

This change, reported in the New York Times in September and in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week, would only remove a big incentive for the home fans to cheer and stomp and scream and yell. It would simply be a slap in the face to the most dedicated customers. Standard NFL operating procedure.

What the league is considering is allowing a communications system in the helmets of all offensive players. The quarterback would have a microphone, the other players speakers. No more need for silent counts. No more quarterbacks not being able to audible to a new play because their teammates can't hear them.

Next page: All variables must be removed, especially the human ones. Plus: Bummer of a tattoo, kid