Given the number of injuries in preseason games, isn’t it a great disservice to players to make them play 4 preseason games?
It’s a greater disservice to the fans that pay full price to watch a bunch of guys that will be unemployed by opening day. Think there are rumors about them extending the regular season by 2 games, and having only 2 preseason games, but that would probably have to be hashed out in the next collective bargaining agreement.
Players need to practice under game conditions. Thus, all sports have preseason games that don’t count in the standings. Baseball is honest about it – they call them exhibition games.
The NFL renamed their exhibition games as “preseason games” so that they could charge the same for them as for their regular games, as well as requiring season ticket holders to buy tickets for them. When they were exhibition games, the fans complained about paying full price for an exhibition. It’s a textbook example of renaming something to make it seem like something different.
But no matter what you call them, the players do need to play a few actual games to be ready for the season. Injuries are a concern, but then players can get injured running drills, too.
They don’t really seem to play that hard in pre-season. A team with no wins in the pre-season can run a string in the regular season. The best players are shuffled in and out in these games while lesser beings are tested for potential. The trend has been to add games to college and professional seasons. I could see them converting pre-season games to games that counted, although that would not seriously increase revenue. They would need to add more total games. That could perhaps be done by including games overseas where there is interest in our sport.
Or the other way around–most famously when Detroit went 4-0 in the preseason and 0-16 in the regular season.
They’ve gone 4-0 before and turned out horribly as well. It’s almost a regular thing. The Lions are nearly champs of preseason performance.
Yay?
The teams charging full price for exhibition games is disgusting. It is like a band charging for rehearsals with non band members playing. It is cheating their customers.
The Lions charging full price for regular season games is also cheating their customers. Why do we have to pay so much when they aren’t even trying? You can not be that far down for 50 years in a row and be accused of trying. The price of tickets should be keyed to their records.
The league is pushing for 2 preseason games and 18 regular season games (vs. the 4/16 of today). More $$ to be made by the NFL (from the TV networks) and more $$ to be made by the TV networks (from advertisers). So, naturally, the NFLPA (the players’s union) is going to demand a piece of the action as well. Some players, though, are concerned about he physical toll of an 18-game season.
Since it’s going to mean more money for everyone, and more football for the fans, I predict it will happen.
They might have to pay people to go!
There’s nothing “wrong” with having the preseason games. It’s useful for the team to practice under game conditions, and helps the coaches evaluate bubble players.
What’s wrong is charging full price for them, and forcing season ticket holders to buy them.
There are also too many. I hear 2 or 3 is plenty.
As far as injuries, training camp alone doesn’t appear any safer, really. Just from me keeping an eye on the 49ers, a key backup/special-teamer went on IR (done for the whole season) from landing awkwardly after jumping for a pass, and our starting center will miss some regular-season games after breaking a leg during regular drills.
From what I can tell, especially from watching Hard Knocks on HBO, preseason games are crucial for coaches to determine cuts from the roster. Some players catch every pass in practice but drop crucial passes when the pressure is on. Other so-so defensive players become tackling monsters when the whistle blows. Coaches hate uncertainty, and preseason games seem to diminish it a little.
ETA: Grrr, beat by the clock. What garygnu said.
What’s wrong? They don’t play their starting lineup. When i had season tickets in Detroit, i got to watch the Lions without Barry Sanders. Why would I want to do that? They don’t even play to win. The record is meaningless as the Lions proved. They should charge like half price and let the season ticket owners get a break. They should not make them mandatory. It would give non season ticket holders a chance to watch the team dance for an hour.
Absolutely agreed here. Drills and scrimmages in practice just are not the same thing as game. It’s much harder to catch a ball over the middle when you know that safety is going to drill you. It’s much different to block or fight off the block of someone you don’t square off against every day in practice.
I don’t like the 18 game season though. Yes, it would make quite a bit more money, but it will increase fatigue and injuries over the course of the season. It will absolutely require at least one more bye week as well. And, hell, even with another bye, 18 just seems like too many games for as brutal as football is; that’s a 12.5% increase in the length of the season and, so it follows, ~12.5% more injuries in a league that is already plagued by injuries.
Since some teams even play 5 pre-season games, I’d rather see them just start all the pre-season games the same time and cut 2 out, 3 is plenty. Then give a bye for everyone between the last pre-season game and the start of the season, and give a second bye during the season. Yes, they’d lose some money from the pre-season games, but this would help a lot with reducing injuries and fatigue. How many teams get a bye week in like week 4 then run 13 more games and are expected to keep playing through the play-offs if they get in? Better rested players will be less likely to get injured, will have more time to recover from injuries, and will likely perform better overall. In short, it should make for a better product overall.
The other advantage of a second bye in the season is that, without adding any games, they get another week of primetime Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night games. I suspect that 3-6 more primetime games, over regular ones, will mostly, if not completely, counter the loss on the TV deal from losing 16 preseason games.
Once upon a time, teams played 6 preseason games. That was before 1978, when the NFL went from a 14-game to a 16-game schedule, and cut the preseason schedule down to its current 4 games (though, as noted, a few teams play a 5th preseason game, such as the Hall of Fame Game).
But, back then, teams really didn’t have off-season programs. The season ended in December, and the players went off to their off-season jobs, and the teams often didn’t see the players again until training camp started in July. At that point, the long preseason schedule was often needed to round players back into playing shape.
But, now, even reserve players make enough money that they don’t really need to take off-season jobs – being a pro football player really is a full-time job now. And, all teams run extensive off-season training programs. So, the need to “round into shape” really isn’t there anymore.
Preseason games still have a purpose, but it’s not for the starters (i.e., the players whom most fans would really want to see). It’s for the coaches to see the new players and the marginal players in game conditions, so that they can make decisions on whom to keep and whom to cut, and how to order the depth chart. I certainly don’t think you need 4 games to do that, and I certainly think it’s deceptive for the teams to charge “full price” for those tickets.
I think out of 4 games the starters play maybe 3 quarters, total.
They gouge their fans 16 quarters including 5th string QBs and guys who will never play again.
I will actually be going to a 49ers preseason game next week due to the “generosity” of my wife’s co-worker*. I’m trying to decide if leaving early will avoid the crowd, or if staying for the whole game would avoid the crowd.
*: Preseaon football games are often pawned off as gifts. This particular co-worker has season tickets not only for the 49ers, but also club-level season seats for the Giants and Sharks.
Pre-season helps coaching staffs settle on rosters, lets the fans see some players in action, get a first look at rookies and free agent acquistions and gives the players a semblence of game conditions to get in shape (and it shows rookies what game speed is like as opposed to practice speed), but they’re just scrimmages, not really games, the fans shouldn’t have to pay full price for them (I actually think they should be free. They’d fill stadiums, and fans who ordinarily can’t afford tickets for real games would have a chance to at least sit in the arenas and see their teams and favorite players in person. It would be good PR for the teams, I think), and there don’t need to be four of them.
They’re not completely worthless if you view and understand them as essentially practice exercises, not as games, but full ticket prices aren’t justified.
Oh, when teams used to be less paranoid/secretive, I’ve enjoyed even just watching scrimmages/practices, which you used to be able to do (maybe you still can). Though wouldn’t pay for that.
And every year there are at least a couple of Cinderella stories or potential ones, so I can get interested in that (also, if you follow the college game there’s a decent chance one or both of the NFL participants will have a player or two in camp whom you liked in college, who played for your alma mater, etc., and you can root him on). For the rookies and scrubs and free agents, you will rarely see more motivated, playoff-level intensity. There’s some intrigue there.
Curious: did/do the Lions even sell out? Was a season ticket package the only way to get guaranteed access to regular season games? I agree I’d be annoyed with the forced bundling, at full price, of pre-season tickets. But I’d assumed I could find regular season tickets at face value or below in the open market. Am I wrong? Obviously I wouldn’t have the benefit of the same location each game, necessarily.
True, but the starters need the practice in game conditions; it’s just that they don’t need a lot of it.
As was pointed out, preseason games are useful, not only for this, but to evaluate talent. But fans shouldn’t be charged full price for them.