Broadcast Games on NFL Network? Ugh.

The NFL Network broadcast its first live game tonight, making a Thanksgiving triple-header. Unfortunately, they failed to follow some basic guidelines for professional football broadcasting and the result was not beneficial to the football-watching experience.

h2. The Play-by-Play Caller Must Be Good. No, Great.

For reasons known only to the mucky-mucks at NFL Network, they went out and hired Bryant Gumbel for their play-by-play commentator. He opened the broadcast with some drivel about "you may be full at this point in the evening, but we hope you still have appetite for football." At that point I knew things were looking bleak indeed. It only got worse when I realized he was going to be calling the game. The first thing wrong with Gumbel isn't anything he can help: his voice just isn't suitable for that kind of job. He hovers in the higher ranges and he is easily overwhelmed by Cris Collinsworth, the color commentator. Second, he is clearly inexperienced. He consistently botched play calls, saying things like a player is stretching for a first-down when in fact he was stretching for the line of scrimmage. Third, he brought a quality of overeagerness that, when combined with the first two issues, reminded me very much of watching my high school football team on the local sports channel.

I can only surmise that the NFL Network felt someone like Bryant Gumbel brought some credibility to their organization and broadcast. Sorry guys, it doesn't. What it does tell me is that you'd rather get someone who's been in the public eye than someone who actually knows the game and what he's doing in the booth. I can understand the decision; it just wasn't the right one. Find someone like Al Michaels, not one of the jokers on Monday Night Football (though any of them would've been a better choice than Gumbel).

Final thought on this one: thank goodness for Cris Collinsworth. Without him it would have been a complete wash.

h2. Design Matters, or At Least Don't Reinvent the Wheel

The design of the persistent on-screen scoreboard was atrocious. It was visually distracting and overly dominant at the top of the screen. They should have learned a thing or two from NBC's broadcast on Sunday and ESPN's Monday Night Football. Besides, there are too many different designs for this out there. You're not helping your viewers, you're making it more confusing and complicated than it needs to be.

The other "wheel" they thought could use some reworking was the visual on-field stripe that shows the line of scrimmage during the action. On every other broadcast game, blue is used for this line, while yellow is the color of the first-down marker unless it's fourth down and then it's replaced with red. NFL Network decided that red should be the line of scrimmage color. First of all, it's not even a good color choice. Red is a color of anger, passion, intensity, etc. It's no coincidence it's used for the stop light. Perfect for a stress-filled do-or-die fourth down situation. Good for the mundane line of scrimmage? Not so much. And of course several times I mistook it for meaning that it was fourth down.

h2. Production Value, People!

By established NFL football broadcast standards, this one was a dud. Camera operators were slow to pick up the football, commercials ended to bring us back to the action which happened to be in the middle of a play, too many commercial time-outs at awkward times... It just felt sloppy.

h2. My Team Should Win

It was a bummer of a game for my Broncos. I can only blame NFL Network and Jake Plummer. It's probably a good thing Jake the Snake's time leading the offense appears to be up. He can be a great player but he can also make a lot of bad decisions and this season has seen far more of the latter.

Okay, I'll cut the NFL Network some slack on that last one. It's not their fault. I am thankful I was able to watch part of the Broncos–Chiefs game (I wasn't able to finish when I saw where it was going). But count me out for the rest of their Thursday Night Football broadcasts.