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Doc would rather watch NFL game on TV


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[b][size="5"]Doc would rather watch NFL game on TV[/size][/b]
By Paul Daugherty • [email="pdaugherty@enquirer.com"][color="#000000"]pdaugherty@enquirer.com[/color][/email] • October 17, 2009


Thanks mostly to Motorola and Chad Eight-Five, the Bengals will be on local TV Sunday. The NFL, which thinks it's OK in terrible economic times to continue sticking it to the people whose taxes pay for the stadiums, must be well pleased.

As are the Bengals, who now have sold out the equivalent of six consecutive seasons. Good for the players and coaches, who are worthy of a full house.

But here is a question. It's heresy, it's lunacy, it's nonsense. Or maybe it isn't:


What's so great about going to an NFL game?


If you'd been faced with the choice of paying for a ticket to Bengals-Texans or suffering the TV blackout, would you have paid?

I know lots of football fans who don't understand why anyone would actually attend an NFL game. The TV coverage has become that good. The TVs themselves are that good. When you can slouch-out in front of a 50-inch high-definition flat screen, 10 paces from the fridge in one direction and 10 paces from the head in another, why would you bother with parking hassles, weather hassles and lining The Family's pocket hassles?

It's not an issue, yet. Even in scary economic times, the NFL is all but SRO. In good seasons, nothing can match the joy of celebrating a win with 60,000 of your closest friends. Nobody ever says, "Remember that time we watched The Freezer Bowl in your parents' basement?"

Things change, though. The $10 ticket then is $70 now. We still have two cars in every garage. Only now, they're 10 years old and need brakes.

The 20-inch Philco then, with the tin foil antenna, is now a work-of-art monster dominating an entire wall. It was established long ago that football is the perfect TV game: A rectangle inside a rectangle. Box-in-box, packaged in a neat three-hour window.

It used to be exotic, to tune in at 4 on a Sunday afternoon and watch the Rams in L.A. Now, you can watch any game you want and you can watch it on a picture so clear, you can count the pebbles of leather on the ball.

In September, Team Marketing Report put the average NFL ticket price at $74.99. A beer is $6.80, parking $24.13. If you're average and going to the game, you're out an above average $105.92. That's $1,059.20 for a 10-game season. Honey, pass the Tuna Helper.

(By the way, the St. Louis Rams have the most expensive lager in the league. At $8.70 for 20 ounces, it's still a bargain, given how bad the Rams are and the high cost of anesthesia. Either you fracture a 10-spot or repeatedly smash your forehead with a hammer after the first quarter.)

Here's what beer costs at home: Five bucks. Seven or eight, maybe, if your six-pack tastes run snootier than Miller or Bud. There are other differences between There at the stadium and Here at home, contrasts that make you think football is better Here:

Here: Fifty inches of high-definition perfection.

There: Binoculars.

Here: Replays, analysis, highlights.

There: JumboVision screen at a 45-degree angle. Fat guys in front of you running relays to the toilet.

Here: Fridge, head, no waiting.

There: Lines. Medieval events in the men's room, especially when Pittsburgh's in town.

Here: Climate control, mute button, loud swearing without persecution. Escape hatch when you can't take it anymore.

There: Leave early because you're hot/cold/wet. Leave early because the Boy Scout next to you is a human thesaurus of four-letter synonyms for "unnatural act." Feel guilty because you just blew $105.92.

While we're rolling: What's the fascination with tail-gating?

There: A cold/hot parking lot, where you fan the coals of a mini-Weber while drinking beer before standing 10-deep multiple times in the Porta-Let line. Slam your thigh into a truck bumper while running a Go route for your buddy throwing a Nerf football. Pay extra to park in the Tailgate Lot.

Here: Free parking. Gas grill, climate control, Barcalounger, indoor plumbing. Touch football on God's own grass.

Here? Or There?

It's not as nuts as you think.





[url="http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091017/COL03/310170032"]http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091017/COL03/310170032[/url]
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Another crappy column from doc.

I do know what he's talking about though. My friend has an extra ticket and I'm probably going to go down to the game to tailgate in an hour or two. But I'm pretty tired and hungover and the thought of skipping all the hassle of traffic, parking, walking, etc. and just going back to bed for a few hours and then watching the game from my couch is tempting.
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It is almost like he is writing a fluff piece for WhoDey Revolution.

I went there the other day and they were going on about supporting
the players and team, but not the owner. Said that there aren't telling
anyone not to enjoy the games, just don't go to them, or buy merchandise.

It made no sense at all to me.
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why dont the bengals just pull his press pass already?

give him access to nothing and no one.. tell the enquirer he isnt welcome there anymore..

he is REALLY hoping for a loss today....

there is nothing like going to the game.. and its not like you cant DVR it and see everything TV had to offer as well.

there is TONS of stuff you cant see from home. player interaction, defensive formations, substitutions sometimes, routes away from the ball, coaches talking to players after plays, stuff on the bench, fights, opposing players and coaches behaviors and reactions. its not even close to the same
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My biggest issue in going to the games is strictly monetary, namely, the price of beer. It doesn't matter how much I tailgate, I'll still drop a Franklin on beer. Then, there's the driving issue to get home. My days of "one-eyeing it" are over.

If I could just get Mike Brown and the Bengals to move the stadium into my back yard, this would not be an issue.

There's nothing like being there. The atmosphere is ELECTRIC. TV has certainly come a long way recently in making it a more pleasant option if you can't go to the game itself...but the crowd noise, the sights/smells, all of it...ALL OF IT...you can't get that on television.
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What the hell does he mean when he says "head"? Bathroom?

Although I use to religiously go to every home game from the last 80's till PBS opened, the prices are just ridiculous right now. I'm in Fort Worth now and obviously I can't go to games anymore, I probably still couldn't afford to go to them now. I kind of see his point. But nothing beats getting to the stadium at 9:00am, busting out the grill, cracking open a beer and just soaking in the atmosphere. Get hammered in the parking lot, buy $8 beer and milk it on the inside. Sigh, but I do miss the tailgating.
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[quote name='BengalBeliever' date='18 October 2009 - 06:51 PM' timestamp='1255906313' post='818394']
Fuck Doc, he has never paid for a god damn ticket to a local sporting event in his career. Go ahead and stay at home with that [b]retard daughter[/b] of yours and watch in on T.V. asshole.
[/quote]


Whoa, too harsh.
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I'm a biased source, I love going down to games and have done it for years. So, of course I'm going to be on the pro side of things in attending.


This article doesn't shock me. Paul and really Lance are Baseball guys. If you listen to them they are really sort of anti-NFL in general. They mask it with their anti-Mike Brown rants et al. In the end, they are die hard baseball guys that and semi football fans and they always get put off having the NFL be the topic of choice during the Fall Classic.

Every year it's the same thing. MLB playoffs, the "Big Red Machine" is dead once again and no one has cared since June. There is nothing wrong with it, that's what they like. The wrong part is when they ignore such overwhelming evidence that people for some reason love the Cincinnati Bengals and NFL football.

Doc is just a grumpy old man wishing for the glory day of baseball to return.
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