Opportunity 'Knocks': Why Every NFL Team Should Produce Its Own Show

HBO has aired three episodes of "Hard Knocks" starring the Cincinnati Bengals. All three episodes, as usual, have been fantastic. The superstars, Chad Ochocinco, Carson Palmer, and Marvin Lewis reveal themselves to a greater degree than a season's worth of media coverage will manage, but so too do those outside the limelight, the executives, the coaches, the rookies. The show isn't just entertaining from a football perspective, it's managed what all great sports narratives accomplish and made you forget that it's telling a story about sports at all.

Most importantly, along the way, "Hard Knocks" has done something I didn't think was possible. It gave me a rooting interest in Cincinnati Bengals games. Prior to watching the show, I could have cared less whether the Bengals won or lost every game all season long. Now, I care. I'll be rooting for several guys on the field who otherwise would have been faceless numbers, and if a Bengals game is on television, I'll be much more likely to watch than I was before.

Let's begin with a thesis that most of you will agree with: the NFL is the most competitive pro sports league in America today. And, subscribing to the driving tenet of American capitalism, that competition makes every team better than they otherwise would be without the competition. What's more, no other pro league offers the promise and pratfalls of the NFL on a season-to-season basis. And no other league has to mine a greater pool of talent to find the right players for their teams. The drama and stakes are real, transparent and vivid. There are no guaranteed contracts, no healthy Stephon Marburys sitting in the stands cashing checks without playing, no baseball players signed to decades long contracts, whiling away the season at seafood buffets -- I'm looking at you C.C. Sabathia. Football is distilled rage, a natural television program brought to you every Sunday, sports as an altar of athletic worship.

As I've watched "Hard Knocks" this summer, I've found myself thinking: NFL teams compete against each other in every possible arena, but one, the direct marketing of their teams and players on television. What if they actually competed to make the best television shows about their team? To make their star players more than mere numbers on the field, to make you care about journeymen who even the biggest fans wouldn't recognize without their helmets on? Some shows would be so good you'd end up caring about teams and players that you've never cared about before. With the competition, sports television would be ratcheted up to a greater level than you've ever seen. When something worked really well, just like on the field each team would steal from every other team and the result would be distilled entertainment brilliance. And for those of us who are fans of particular teams, we'd end up with better footage and stories about our favorite teams than we'd ever seen before.

How amazing would this television be? Just thinking about it makes me giddy.

Of course teams wouldn't have to do this, but the ones that did would enjoy the risk and reward that comes with producing great television, more viewers, greater attention for their teams, and an increased fan base. Ultimately they'd sell more tickets, more merchandise, and make their team more desirable to play for. Before the NFL Balkan-ized regional sports television, we could all keep up with most teams without subscribing to DirecTV. With the advent of compelling NFL television shows, we could do the so once more. These shows would make us care more about our favorite teams than we already do, and they'd make us care about teams that we don't care about at all now.

Isn't this what ultimately keeps the turnstiles moving, a tangible connection between player, coach, and fan? Yet when it comes to media coverage, most teams outsource the production of their stories to people who don't know the players best: columnists, beat writers, television reporters and the like. What's more, they require that only a circumscribed piece of the players' lives be covered by these men and women? How many articles can a fan read about defensive line depth or the latest "rivalry" game laced with one cliche after another before he tears up the newspaper and screams? (Note: This would be a little harder to do with a Web site) Fans crave a connection with their players and teams, a sense of what the reality of their lives truly are like, yet most coverage of NFL stars makes these players, paradoxically, more remote than they already were before.

That remoteness is ironic now, because the players themselves are tearing down the walls that divide them from fans. With Twitter, Ustream, blogs, and other social media, players are opening up more aspects of their lives than they ever have before. All the while most teams try and tamp down on the personal attention.

Except for the consistently excellent "Hard Knocks."

Why does "Hard Knocks" succeed every fall? Because the show does a better job of revealing the characters on a football team than an entire season's worth of media coverage ever does. It isn't anesthetized platitudes. The players curse, they mock one another, they cry, they uplift us with their off-the-field heroism, they whine over their snaps, terrify and confound us with their megalomania. In short, they behave like people. Real, vivid people. Too many NFL teams are concerned about their players being shown in a negative light, and zealously monitor the player's media availability. I say that's shortsighted in today's era. Someone much smarter than me said we come to love people not because of their positive traits but because of their flaws. When Tony Soprano is a national hero, I think that point has already been proven. Football players are flawed just like us. Which, in the end, makes us root for them harder than we ever would have before. We'd rather watch an authentic asshole, than an inauthentic saint.

Put simply, how many people have been Bengals' fans for decades and feel like they have a better understanding of their team after three weeks of this television show than they have after the past three years of media coverage?

Tons.

Which brings me back to my original point, why isn't every team producing a television show like "Hard Knocks" for their fans to consume? I'm going to go ahead and knock down the anti-rationales for the team's producing their own television show.

1. Every team needs independent media to cover them.

First, I don't even know if I believe this anymore. Second, the team's own television show, just like "Hard Knocks," would be a supplement to existing coverage.

Clearly, there's an argument out there that if the team is involved in their own coverage, they'll slant the coverage to avoid bad news from getting out. My question for fans is what bad news isn't getting out now? If a player gets in trouble, the arrest record is public. If a player is under investigation, it gets leaked. Especially in today's Internet era. Bad news is getting out there, regardless. We don't need someone close to the team to get a terse, "no comment," followed by a report on how sad the offending player is for letting down his teammates.

As for whether the team slants the coverage, inevitably this would happen. But no television show, unless it's on an individual for every second of every day can completely convey reality. If the show conveys too little reality, then it wouldn't succeed. That is, if the show is a glorified puff piece that doesn't give fans a feeling that they're seeing something new, then people won't watch. Television is competitive, the best shows will survive and everyone will learn what works and what doesn't. There's already one successful example, "Hard Knocks," use it as the template and run with it.

2. Independent local media are "objective."

This is one of the great facades of sports journalism today, that most reporters are "objective." No, they aren't. The majority of local sports reporters, television, radio, and print, are rooting for their team, the team they cover, to win. It's against human nature not to. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with this. I actually think it's more ridiculous for someone to claim that they're completely objective when everything offers evidence that they're not. If you're capable of true objectivity, then why did you choose to cover games for a living? Why aren't you a judge or a university admissions counselor?

Here's an idea, why not give up objectivity as the standard and adopt something that the law uses, the voice of the reasonable fan. We rely upon the reasonable man on a jury to determine many of our legal complexities. If that's good enough for a court of law, why isn't it good enough for sports?

For national sports figures this might not work, but for 95 percent of sports reporters this would be perfectly fine. Moreover, I think this perspective is more likely to be trusted by fans because it puts a "bias" out in the open.
Would sports reporting really suffer? I don't think so. You'd still have to get your facts correct to be consistently trusted.

I think everything else would stay the same. Truly. Only reporters could be more honest.

3. Football is too serious to have a television show based around it. What about bulletin board material?

Child, please. Everyone would have bulletin board material. The reality is everyone already has bulletin board material. Most fans and media focus way too much on this stuff. But if a coach really cared about the potential impact of television content on a weekly game, then the show could air after the season, during the long, cold late winter when we're waiting for spring to arrive. Teams could experiment with which shows work best. Preseason, postseason, midseason, you name it. The great laboratory of NFL television would be concocting the best potion.

All of this coverage of sports as entertainment would be a nice antidote to what afflicts sports today, namely the idea that sports really matter and everyone should behave like they're members of the White House press corps. None of us are that important. Nor is our job. We write about games. I feel like Allen Iverson with his famous practice rant. We talkin' about games, man. Games.

4. The media is evolving, the team can get their story directly to the fans without a middle man.

The media is the middle man. If you can get your story directly to your consumer, why would the middle man need to take a cut of your profits?

The Washington Redskins have already started to do an awful lot of this. And it can be scary for all involved. But can't it also be liberating? Instead of pitching storylines to writers, the team has the potential to create the storylines. Then the media has the potential to determine whether those storylines are accurate or not.

Sooner or later, every NFL team is going to have to kiss the baby, now's the time.