Month: December 2013

So I can get at least ONE webcomic review in in calendar year 2013. Even if it’s very short.

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(From Square Root of Minus Garfield. Click for full-sized apocalyptic statements.)

Once upon a time, the people behind the site mezzacotta, a repository for all the half-baked ideas they could come up with, came up with another one: a comic that would consist of every single mash-up of the newspaper comic Garfield that they could come up with.

And lo, it was good. Even though I considered myself a Garfield fan (though I had started to think it was running low on ideas and dreaded the point when my book collection got far enough to include Jon hooking up with Liz), I still found myself fascinated by the numerous ways the Comic Irregulars found to mash up a Garfield comic each day. So many people wanted to come up with their own mashups that the comic eventually moved to a daily schedule to accommodate them all.

Then I started to fall behind on my RSS reader, and when I returned, √-G had become a noticeably different comic. It had become too reliant on beating old memes into the ground, usually based on mash-ups of the same comic or two. So when I started my ill-fated attempt to use Archive Binge (another former mezzacotta project) to assist in reviewing webcomics, one of the comics I chose was Square Root of Minus Garfield, thinking that I could find myself doing my own “you had me, and you lost me” on it. But a funny thing happened: the other comics I chose to review inspired such dread in me that I actually found myself looking forward to the point where I would read the day’s batch of √-G comics – admittedly part of that probably had to do with the utter lack of drama compared to the others.

I eventually abandoned the project, but I did eventually catch up on all the √-G comics that I’d missed, and I’ve had it in my RSS reader for a few months now, probably dating back at least to the closure of Google Reader. So what’s the verdict?

Well… Square Root of Minus Garfield is certainly a different comic than it was when it started.

The memes have calmed down, in part due to David Morgan-Mar’s efforts to space things out between repetitions of a meme, but they’re still present and groan-inducing. Originality is much more rewarded, but it’s not necessarily good originality; some of the more unique mashups seem to be a thing of the past, and a goodly number of mashups are specific to one particular strip, even when they aren’t memes. I still hold to what I said in 2011: modern √-G reads much better read as it comes out than in one huge batch, as the repetition of the memes stands out much more when you’re exposed to many repetitions at once.

And yet… there’s still something about √-G that’s weirdly compelling. It’s now much more of a straight-up vaguely absurdist humor comic, less about the ideas presented and more purely about the humor that can be wrung out of it. Certainly there are a few groan-inducing comics, particularly the overplayed memes, but even then it doesn’t overstay its welcome like some more dramatic strips might. I probably won’t feel inclined to catch up if I fall behind again, though it would be relatively easy to do so, but for the time being I think it might actually stay in my RSS reader, at least on a provisional basis.

Certainly, no matter how much I might like what Garfield used to be, I have to imagine √-G is still funnier and more original than what Garfield is now.

The Studio Show Scorecard for Week of November 18-24

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PT Rnk

TD Rnk

 Nov Distr.
(000)		 PT Vwr
(000)		 LW/LY TD Vwr
(000)		 TD HH TD Vwr
LW/LY

1

=

1

=

97370

3177

-8%

1195

0.8

-14%

=

=

84%

3177

-1%

1195

-14%

-0%

3

=

2

=

97407

702

-20%

337

0.2

-15%

-1

=

84%

702

+49%

337

-14%

+3%

2

=

3

=

72066

1101

+15%

287

0.2

+9%

+5

=

62%

1488

+841%

388

+2%

+146%

4

+2

4

+1

74882

230

+50%

111

0.1

+32%

+2

+2

65%

299

+70%

144

+45%

+40%

5

=

5

+1

78139

179

-7%

82

0.0

+21%

-2

+3

67%

223

+3%

102

+33%

+26%

7

-3

6

-2

88556

136

-53%

76

0.0

-33%

-2

-2

76%

150

0%

83

-27%

-19%

8

=

7

=

74685

92

+11%

64

0.0

+3%

=

=

64%

120

-9%

84

-1%

-11%

6

+1

8

+1

59078

148

+68%

58

0.0

+6%

-2

-3

51%

244

-9%

96

+10%

-28%

9

=

9

-1

81751

90

+18%

58

0.0

-4%

=

=

71%

107

+30%

69

-0%

+48%

10

=

10

=

70036

52

+44%

30

0.0

+35%

+1

+1

60%

72

+100%

41

+102%

+65%

I’ve introduced a new table below, tracking the retention for SportsCenter, Olbermann, and Fox Sports Live leading out of sports events. Ratings for these shows tend to be very lead-in dependent, and you generally expect the ratings to get bigger as the lead-in gets bigger. With retention, you expect the opposite: the smaller the lead-in, the bigger the retention as more people are watching specifically for that show. That’s why the Monday SportsCenter after Monday Night Football has poor retention compared to SportsCenters later in the week despite a massive audience. (This is also going to be the main place for me to list College Football Final and select other weekly ESPN2 shows. If a show actually has more viewers than its lead-in, I list the retention as “up” to signify that viewership went “up” and also that retention tells us little in this case.)

Other than MNF, SportsCenter can usually expect to retain around two-thirds of its lead-in audience. I have a small sample size, but what evidence I do have suggests Olbermann’s retention is much lower. Then there’s Fox Sports Live; with college basketball or weak college football as a lead-in it can achieve SportsCenter-esque retention, but it really doesn’t take much for FSL to retain just a fifth to a quarter of its lead-in; Wednesday’s FSL after the Ultimate Fighter has worse retention than the following day’s Olbermann, despite Olbermann having fewer raw viewers. Perhaps most distressingly, even a re-air of the Ultimate Fighter on Sunday night bleeds a ton of viewers when FSL comes on to just 9,000 viewers.

All numbers are in thousands of viewers and are from Son of the Bronx.

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The Studio Show Scorecard for Week of November 11-17

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PT Rnk

TD Rnk

 Nov Distr.
(000)		 PT Vwr
(000)		 LW/LY TD Vwr
(000)		 TD HH TD Vwr
LW/LY

1

=

1

=

97370

3470

-3%

1383

1.0

-4%

=

=

84%

3470

+5%

1383

-3%

+6%

3

+1

2

=

97407

877

+57%

397

0.3

+16%

=

=

84%

877

+99%

397

+15%

+20%

2

=

3

=

72066

959

+1%

264

0.2

-3%

=

=

62%

1296

+12%

357

-4%

+5%

4

-1

4

=

88556

289

-54%

113

0.1

-29%

=

=

76%

318

+29%

125

-39%

-11%

6

+1

5

+2

74882

153

+43%

83

0.0

+17%

-1

=

65%

199

-18%

109

+24%

-7%

5

+1

6

-1

78139

193

+30%

68

0.0

-14%

+3

+2

67%

240

+133%

85

-1%

+58%

8

+1

7

+2

74685

83

-13%

62

0.0

-3%

-1

-1

64%

108

-7%

81

+9%

-23%

9

-1

8

=

81751

76

-28%

60

0.0

-15%

=

+1

71%

91

+12%

72

-26%

+44%

7

-2

9

-3

59078

88

-48%

55

0.0

-25%

-1

-2

51%

145

-25%

90

-25%

-18%

10

=

10

=

70036

36

+33%

22

0.0

+4%

=

=

60%

50

+6%

31

  

-9%

Because I screwed up and forgot how I did week-to-week comparisons for FS1 studio shows last time, and because I have another big game coming up with its own attendant potential effects on FS1 ratings, I’m going to do at least two more Scorecards and do four weeks’ worth of comparisons on the second one. However, the overall averages for FS1 this week remain far enough ahead of any competitors that aren’t ESPN, ESPN2, or NFL Network to be very encouraging.

I’m so late that I’ve integrated the November viewership numbers into the chart above, complete with ESPN2 being in more households than ESPN. I can actually see how some small cable systems might offer ESPN2 to subscribers but not ESPN, but in any case ESPN dismisses this as an anomaly and the result of “a small number of misclassified homes”. I would expect ESPN2 to take a “small” but significant drop in future months if this were fixed, but so far as I can tell SportsBusiness Daily has not published December numbers at all. In any case, ESPN and ESPN2 have been running close enough to neck-in-neck that it doesn’t much matter, and I’m going to keep listing ESPN ahead of ESPN2 in the charts. (ESPNU also seems to have leapfrogged ESPNEWS, but I’m too lazy to reverse their positions on the charts they both appear on, at least this week. Besides, I don’t know if that’ll hold in future months.)

All numbers are in thousands of viewers and are from Son of the Bronx.

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A not-quite-so-belated blog-day.

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In many ways, Year Seven of Da Blog was a wasted year for me. This is the 91st post since my last blog-day post, when I didn’t think I would ever have less than 100 again, considering the circumstances when I last had that few. The reasons I’ve had low post output in the past don’t seem to apply this year – for example, neither this post nor last year’s blog-day post were made cowering in a bus stop shelter.

Part of the reason is that, after making a commitment to more webcomic reviews in my first post of the new year, I wound up not doing a single full review this year, in part because the comics I chose to start with on Comic Rocket were uniformly uninspiring at best (though I hope to get one in by the end of 2013). I also haven’t managed to get completely caught up on Homestuck all year, which would have been good for a substantial number of webcomics posts, and OOTS has gotten even slower at post frequency since Rich’s thumb injury. But even webcomics posts are only part of the story. I’ve tried to put more focus on schoolwork (passing one of the two incredibly difficult classes I had to pass), but even that only goes so far towards explaining things.

No, a bigger issue is the thing that has increasingly taken over Da Blog over the past six months-plus, causing me to be ridiculously late on a number of things, including a sports graphics roundup I should have put up by the end of August: the sports ratings posts. The Studio Show Scorecard has been an especially nasty culprit. The only responses I got on the semi-recent Da Blog Poll were supportive of keeping the Scorecard going, but I’m serious, without it going through each week’s ratings would take only 40% of the time it does and it would still come out to over an hour and a half; as it stands it takes almost four hours, and much of the SSS work is really tedious. (And I’m going to add something else to the SSS that’ll make it take even longer when we get to the November 18 post.) Other than the SNF Flex Schedule Watch, which is pretty short and easy for me to do and attracts a considerable amount of traffic to Da Blog, virtually all other posts disappeared once the SSS started, and neither type of ratings post has been all that successful at attracting traffic to Da Blog. Among other things, the final year of the college football rankings ended up being nonexistent as a result.

In some way, shape or form, Year Eight is going to be a big year for Da Blog, whether good or bad. I’ve said that before, but in this case it kind of has to be. I believe I have one class remaining before graduation, meaning I would be effectively taking the spring off, and the way that class is set up for me I might be effectively taking the winter off. I’m probably going to have to get a real job fairly quickly, and by the end of the year I’ll either be working that job – and probably will have figured out how much time I can devote to Da Blog long-term – or in a situation where my work on Da Blog is being directly supported and nurtured.

I’m going to be making some effort to make something of Da Blog over the first few months of 2014. I’m working on a series of posts taking a big-picture view of the sports TV wars that should go up in the first few weeks of the new year, I’m going to try and do some bigger things around the sports TV ratings posts, and I have a few more ideas I’m going to try to make something of. 2014 is going to be a transition year for me, one unmatched since the year that saw the launch of Da Blog. Only time will tell if it’s going to be a transition that’s good or bad for Da Blog.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 15

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; six teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the 49ers don’t have at least one game that can be flexed out. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

First, a postscript on the Week 16 selection of Bears-Eagles: apparently the NFL flexed out a perfectly passable and important Patriots-Ravens game for the same reason I adhered to a 22-20 rule for two years before being disproved at the end of the second year. In short, if the NFL didn’t make a CBS-to-Fox flex it wouldn’t be able to flex in a CBS game Week 17. Of course flexing in Lions-Eagles Week 14 and Panthers-Saints this week would have achieved the same goal without making the Week 17 flex more dramatic than it had to be, all for the sake of preserving a CBS-Fox balance that, as it turned out, might not even have been relevant if the NFL hadn’t flexed in Bears-Eagles!

Week 17 (December 29):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (6-8)
SOUTH
49-5		 511-3
CLINCHED
NORTH
39-5		 68-6
8-6
EAST
210-4		 8-6
8-6 7-7
WEST
111-3
11-3
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (7-6-1)
NORTH
48-6		 510-4
7-6-1
EAST
38-6		 610-4
7-7
SOUTH
210-4		 9-5
10-4
WEST
112-2
10-4
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Eagles-Cowboys, Packers-Bears, Ravens-Bengals. (The Jets lost and Miami won, so Jets-Dolphins is out, and the 49ers winning this past week, holding the tiebreaker, and playing on Monday night keeps 49ers-Cardinals from being an option.)
  • Eagles-Cowboys will be selected if: The Cowboys win OR the Packers lose AND the Bengals win AND the Ravens lose AND the Bears beat the Eagles. The NFL could have flexed this game in if the Cowboys and Eagles both lost, but no-o-o-o.
  • Packers-Bears will be selected if: The Packers win OR the Lions lose AND the Cowboys lose AND the Bengals win AND the Ravens lose AND the Eagles beat the Bears. Thanks to the NFC North trying to out-mediocre the NFC East in recent weeks, this game has a real chance to pull the semi-upset, especially if Aaron Rodgers comes back. I’m cracking open the possibility that if it comes down to Eagles-Cowboys or Packers-Bears, the NFL could make the selection contingent on the Bears-Eagles game and have Bob Costas ready to announce it on the postgame.
  • Ravens-Bengals will be selected if: The Cowboys lose AND the Packers lose AND the Bengals lose AND the Dolphins win AND the Ravens lose. That this game ends up determining the AFC North crown is highly likely, as it would only require the Bengals to lose or the Ravens to win, and that would at least allow this game to serve as the NFL’s ace in the hole if Eagles-Cowboys and Packers-Bears are both contingent on the Bears-Eagles result… but if the loser can still pick up the wild card, the NFL may shy away, especially since this game is far less attractive than the perpetual train wreck known as the Dallas Cowboys or the Packers-Bears rivalry, and especially if this just determines home field advantage for a rematch the following week. (In other words, if the Colts lose the NFL is definitely not picking this game in any scenario other than the above.) All told, this week could end up saying a lot about how much the NFL places on being able to announce the Week 17 game at halftime of SNF (or alternatively over whether the NFL favors NBC or Fox more and which game is seen as more attractive), and a lot could depend on how much the NFL can wait to pick one game or the other without having too many ripple effects on the afternoon schedule. There’s an off chance, if things break just right, the NFL just picks Eagles-Cowboys and runs the risk of it being irrelevant (which is still better than being half-relevant).

Rethinking Penny Arcade

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For as long as I have been following webcomics, I have been perplexed by the wild popularity of Penny Arcade. In my original review I reached the conclusion that it was the blog posts on the front of the site, of which the comic was a mere illustration, that were the real source of the comic’s popularity, and very little I’ve seen since has dissuaded me from that.

Last Friday, Jerry “Tycho” Holkins announced that Penny Arcade would be scaling back considerably; gone would be the Penny Arcade Report or third-party videos on PATV. The implication of the blog post seemed to be that if it weren’t for how huge Child’s Play or PAX had become, they’d be abandoning those things too.

This is a surprising about-face on a number of levels. For one thing, I don’t think the PAR really had a chance to reach the same levels of indispensability as Child’s Play or PAX, only going on for a year and a half. For another, just last year PA held a Kickstarter to remove ads from its web site that, regardless of its original intentions, ended up growing their brand even further, through the creation of the Strip Search web-reality show (though in retrospect that Kickstarter could be seen as a warning shot that something like this could be coming down the pike). It’s tempting to read this as a response to numerous controversies that PA had gotten into recently, especially a job posting that seemed to encourage applicants to lower their salary expectations – a pure cost-cutting effort, in other words.

Still, when I read this, I wanted to be a fly on the wall when Gabe and Tycho told their sugar daddy Robert Khoo about their decision. Khoo once told Gary “Fleen” Tyrell that PA was “a content-creating company focused on the videogame industry, with the webcomic just one part of it. Granted, the comic is the dominant part, but he didn’t commit to that always being true.” Gabe and Tycho now seem to have gone the opposite direction: they have effectively made clear that they don’t want to be a general “content-creating company focused on the video game industry”.

To be sure, it’s not like Khoo forced everything they’ve done over the past 15 years on them; Gabe introduced the PAR as “what we want to see from games journalism”, and both Child’s Play and PAX occurred as a result of Gabe and Tycho thinking about various issues. At no point did they do anything solely because Khoo told them it was the next step they needed to take on their march to global domination. Rather, it seems that Gabe and Tycho have come to the same realization I’ve tried to follow: that just because you feel someone should do something doesn’t mean you’re the ones to do it.

You might think the lesson here is a variation on an old theme: not to do something just because “that’s what you do” or “that’s what you need to do to grow your business” or your “brand”, but because you actually want to do it. And maybe it is. But if I was right about PA – if, as I put it when the PAR launched, “the larger empire that PA has grown into is not a symptom of its success; rather, it literally is its success” – I can’t help but wonder if Gabe and Tycho may have just made the decision to take down all that made them popular in the first place. By keeping Child’s Play and PAX they may only be turning back the clock to five to eight years ago, still a stage when they were the envy of the webcomics community, but they may still prove to be a cautionary tale, a sign that sometimes, those people telling you to “grow your brand” may have a point, because without them you may not have a brand.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 14

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; six teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the 49ers don’t have at least one game that can be flexed out. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 16 (December 22):

  • Selected game: Chicago @ Philadelphia. Now I know the NFL goofed up when it flexed Panthers-Saints into primetime this past Sunday night. Someone commented on my Last-Minute Remarks post that flexing out a perfectly good tentative might be compensation for CBS giving up the Chiefs-Broncos protection, as well as for the NFL’s inability to flex Cardinals-Eagles into primetime the week before, but both of those would have been solved and the whole thing avoided if the NFL had flexed Lions-Eagles last Sunday night and Saints-Panthers this week. Yes, if Al Michaels is right Saints-Panthers is less important now, Lions-Eagles would have been a snowy mess (Fox had to paint yard lines on the field!) with the added factor of night making it that much colder, and Fox had to keep Seahawks-49ers in the late spot so there’s no guarantee they would have even put Saints-Panthers there, but there had to have been a better way to handle this – especially since Eagles-Cowboys had been the odds-on favorite for Week 17 and now it’s highly unlikely NBC would be able to announce that at halftime, which just makes this look all the more supremely dumb. I can pretty much guarantee you that if next year’s rules were in place the whole thing would have been handled very differently. (Meanwhile, the folks at the 506sports.com forums who insist there’s something preventing the NFL from moving both halves of a divisional matchup to primetime against all evidence just got some ammo.)

Week 17 (December 29):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (5-8)
SOUTH
48-5		 510-3
5-8
NORTH
39-4		 67-6
7-6
EAST
210-3		 7-6
7-6 6-7
WEST
111-2		 6-7
10-3
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (7-6)
NORTH
47-6		 59-4
7-6
EAST
38-5		 69-4 6-6-1
7-6
SOUTH
210-3		 8-5
9-4
WEST
111-2
9-4
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Eagles-Cowboys (the odds-on favorite), Packers-Bears, Ravens-Bengals, Jets-Dolphins, 49ers-Cardinals.
  • Chances for Eagles-Cowboys: 40 percent. As before, this game now looks a lot less likely, at least if the NFL wants to make the announcement at halftime of Week 16. Considering it’s an NFC East matchup, under normal circumstances all that would be needed would be to avoid a) either the Eagles winning their next two and the Cowboys losing at least one or the Cowboys losing their next two and the Eagles winning at least one or b) the Eagles losing their next two and the Cowboys winning their next two (as the Cowboys would win a division tiebreaker even with an Eagles win in that circumstance). But just that short list of situations could completely preclude this game from happening in any of the following situations where it might otherwise be plausible: the Eagles win their next game and the Cowboys split, the Eagles lose their next game and the Cowboys lose both, the Eagles lose their next game and the Cowboys win both. And, of course, if the Eagles win their next game and the Cowboys lose both the division is already theirs. That leaves just two situations where the Bears-Eagles result has no impact and Cowboys-Eagles can still be announced at halftime: the Eagles winning their next game and the Cowboys winning both, and the Eagles losing their next game and the Cowboys splitting, because if the teams remain a game apart the Cowboys have the head-to-head tiebreaker with a win.
  • Chances for Packers-Bears: 10 percent. Did we mention this game is affected by the Week 16 game too? And that this game would probably need the Bears and Packers to win profusely and the Lions to lose profusely?
  • Chances for Ravens-Bengals: 20 percent. The Ravens are currently tied for a wild card spot, so in order for this game to be flexed in not only would the Bengals have to lose their next two and the Ravens win at least one (the Ravens won their previous matchup and so would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker), it would probably help if the Dolphins won their next two as well and tried to preclude the Ravens from still getting a wild card with a loss.
  • Chances for Jets-Dolphins: 15 percent. If the Dolphins lose both and the Jets win both, the Dolphins would still hold a head-to-head tiebreaker with a win, and the Jets hold the common-games tiebreaker and can’t do worse than tie the division tiebreaker, so as long as the teams remain within a game of one another this game would determine the order in which they finish relative to one another. But Baltimore would have to be unable to make the playoffs if they don’t win the division and Ravens-Bengals needs to be out as an option, which probably means this game needs Baltimore to lose both games, and I haven’t even talked about San Diego.
  • Chances for 49ers-Cardinals: 15 percent. The Niners beat them the first time and hold the division tiebreaker no matter what, so the Niners would need to lose at least one more game than the Cardinals (either the 49ers lose both with the Cardinals winning at least one or the Cardinals win both with the 49ers losing at least one), but with all the teams in the “waiting in the wings” column probably winning their mediocre divisions before they get the wild card, there’s an excellent chance this game would be win-and-you’re-in in that case. The problem: the Niners play on Monday night, so really the only situation where this game could be flexed in no matter what would be if the Niners lost their next game and the Cardinals won both. This is why Cowboys-Eagles still has the percentage it does: NBC’s best hope may end up being to flex it in and hope for the best, because the worst case might end up being the game having no impact at all. I’m not ruling out the possibility of me having to check Panthers-Falcons or Chiefs-Chargers either.

Last-Minute Remarks on SNF Week 16 Picks

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Week 16 (December 22):

  • Tentative game: New England @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 10-3 v. 7-6; pretty lopsided, but the name value could still save it and the Ravens are very much alive in the playoff hunt (then again, every AFC team that’s not the Texans – more on them in a bit – and Jags are).
  • Protected games: Broncos-Texans (CBS) and Cowboys-Indians (FOX).
  • Other possible games mentioned on Tuesday’s Watch and their records: Saints-Panthers (10-3 v. 9-4 in some order), Colts (8-5)-Chiefs (10-3), Cardinals (7-5)-Seahawks (11-1, both teams currently playing), Bears (6-6)-Eagles (8-5).
  • Impact of Monday Night Football: The Bears are playing, but Bears-Eagles doesn’t really have a shot to be flexed in.
  • Analysis: CBS’ decision to protect Broncos-Texans over Colts-Chiefs was questionable at the time since the Texans definitely had the worst record of the four at 2-3 and seemed to be in a tailspin; now it seems to have given the Texans the kiss of death, as they haven’t won since (even losing to the freaking Jaguars twice!) and the Colts and Chiefs have only two-thirds as many losses between them as the Texans have themselves. But CBS looks to be off the hook for that with the Colts losing, making Colts-Chiefs not only definitely worse than Saints-Panthers but slightly lopsided as well. This selection will say a lot about the NFL’s priorities, because the Ravens have recovered enough to get above .500 (if it weren’t for a questionable pass interference call Patriots-Ravens would be equally as lopsided as Colts-Chiefs and only a game worse) and I might ordinarily side with the tentative game bias here even with Saints-Panthers’ awesome pair of records… on the other hand, the NFL showed with the Chiefs-Broncos protection overrule – oh sorry, “voluntary protection dropping” – a desire to flex in games on the singleheader network to deliver them to a national audience, and Fox has the singleheader this week… on the other other hand, if that were a factor here the NFL wouldn’t have flexed in Panthers-Saints this week, because now flexing in Saints-Panthers means taking away both halves of a divisional matchup from Fox (both of them being flexed in without Week 17’s weird circumstances being a factor) and putting the same matchup on NBC twice in three weeks (without the playoffs being a factor). I’m not saying I would be surprised if Saints-Panthers was flexed in, but considering the records aren’t quite as attractive as Chiefs-Broncos was…
  • Final prediction: New England Patriots @ Baltimore Ravens (no change).

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 13

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; six teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the 49ers don’t have at least one game that can be flexed out. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 17):

  • Selected game: Kansas City @ Denver.

Week 12 (November 24):

  • Selected game: Denver @ New England.

Week 13 (December 1):

  • Selected game: NY Giants @ Washington.

Week 14 (December 8):

  • Selected game: Carolina @ New Orleans.

Week 15 (December 15):

  • Selected game: Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh.

Week 16 (December 22):

  • Tentative game: New England @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 9-3 v. 6-6; pretty lopsided, but the name value could still save it if it weren’t for the strong alternatives, and the Ravens are very much alive in the playoff hunt (then again, every AFC team that’s not the Texans – more on them in a bit – and Jags are).
  • Protected games: Broncos-Texans (CBS) and Cowboys-Indians (FOX).
  • Other possible games: CBS’ decision to protect Broncos-Texans over Colts-Chiefs was questionable at the time since the Texans definitely had the worst record of the four at 2-3 and seemed to be in a tailspin; now it seems to have given the Texans the kiss of death, as they haven’t won since (even losing to the freaking Jaguars!) and the Colts and Chiefs have as many losses between them as the Texans have themselves. But Colts-Chiefs will have to compete with the Saints-Panthers rematch, especially with CBS holding the doubleheader, and Cardinals-Seahawks and Bears-Eagles are waiting in the wings.
  • Analysis: Cardinals-Seahawks is even more lopsided than the tentative and Bears-Eagles is a battle of two teams out of the playoffs when no team in the other two games has more than four losses. It basically comes down to Saints-Panthers and Colts-Chiefs, and while Fox would scream bloody murder at losing both halves of a divisional matchup (without even one of them falling in Week 17), especially twice in three weeks, under the “Chiefs-Broncos rule” the NFL would have been better served keeping the game in the Superdome on Fox; as a result, if both games have identical pairs of records I think the tie goes to Saints-Panthers (having the more name quarterbacks and teams doesn’t hurt). The game in the Superdome is this week with the teams holding identical records and is therefore irrelevant, but unless the Colts and Chiefs both win (putting it a full game ahead of Saints-Panthers) and the Ravens lose, CBS might be off the hook for its blunder of a protection. A Ravens win might be enough for the tentative to keep its spot, but a loss could very easily open the door for one of the other two games to waltz in.

Week 17 (December 29):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS
NORTH
48-4		 59-3 5-7
6-6 5-7
SOUTH
38-4		 66-6 5-7
5-7 5-7
EAST
29-3		 6-6 4-8
6-6 4-8
WEST
110-2		 4-8
9-3
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS
EAST
47-5		 59-3 6-6
7-5 5-6-1
NORTH
37-5		 68-4
6-6
SOUTH
29-3		 7-5
9-3 7-5
WEST
111-1
8-4
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Eagles-Cowboys (the odds-on favorite), Packers-Bears, Ravens-Bengals, Jets-Dolphins, 49ers-Cardinals.