Full Article Below. NBC Embarrassed Itself With Chiefs-Jets Broadcast 1. I’ve been staring at a blank page for 15 minutes to try to find a nice, timid way to say this, but I couldn’t come up with anything, so I’m just gonna go with my original thought: NBC embarrassed itself Sunday night. From start to finish, the broadcast of Chiefs-Jets was hard to stomach for a legitimate NFL fan. If you aren’t a football fan and just tuned in for the spectacle, then NBC did a great job. But if you cared about the football game, you were treated to a rough three hours. There’s a fine line between having fun with something and going overboard and becoming cringe. NBC was beyond cringe. And not just with the Taylor Swift nonsense. I have no idea what happened in the pregame show and I don’t care. If NBC wanted to do three hours of Taylor Swift during the pregame show, fine. Nobody cares about NBC’s pregame show. But then the actual game finally started, and the first thing the broadcast did was have poor Mike Tirico welcome the Swifties. The second thing NBC did was have sideline reporter Melissa Stark give us a report on Swift and Aaron Rodgers: two people who weren’t playing in the game and had absolutely nothing to do with the game. So NBC made it clear from the beginning that it was going for a full spectacle. And full spectacle we got with numerous camera shots of Swift and Rodgers At one point, NBC was so beside itself with Swift madness, it was just cutting to Swift in the completely awkward ways. Isiah Pacheco scores on a 48-yard touchdown run and starts celebrating? Who cares? WE MUST SHOW TAYLOR!!! At another point NBC showed the street sign for New York City’s Cornelia Street, the title of one of Swift’s songs. Because that is what NFL fans care about during a close game. You know what Sunday night felt like? It felt like the Super Bowl. A game that is catered to the nonfootball fan. The NFL’s biggest games on Sundays get 20 million to 25 million viewers. The Super Bowl gets 100 million viewers. So the Super Bowl telecast is for the other 70 million to 75 million people in that the actual game is secondary. That’s what happened Sunday. NBC figured it was going to have all these non-NFL fans tune in to see Taylor Swift jump around and make faces in the suite and NBC decided it was going to center the broadcast on those viewers. It wasn’t just the Swift stuff that was hard to take. The way Cris Collisworth “analyzed” Zach Wilson was truly absurd. Collinsworth spoke about Wilson the way a parent speaks about a toddler when they first use the toilet on their own after being potty trained. Anytime Wilson completed a pass, Collinsworth was effusive in his praise. Did Wilson play well? Sure. Did he play out of this world? Not even close. He was 28-of-39 for 245 yards with two TDs and no interceptions. Solid game. But by the end, Collinsworth tried to have you think Wilson was Tom Brady. Here’s what Wilson did: He led his team to 18 points and a loss. All of this might have been fine if the game were a blowout or noncompetitive. But it was actually a good game, with the Jets having a chance to pull off a stunning upset. Plus, the point spread was in the balance all night. So the NFL fan was totally invested in that game. But everything I say here is completely irrelevant because NBC is going to end up with a monster rating for the game, and that’s all that matters to the network and the NFL. 2. Now I will defend NBC on something, sorta. A lot of people online are mad about Rodney Harrison’s calling Zach Wilson “garbage” and Harrison’s trying to bait Chiefs defensive star Chris Jones into bashing Wilson during a postgame interview. A few things here. I don’t like Harrison calling Wilson garbage. He should’ve said Wilson has played like garbage. But Harrison’s quote was, “He is garbage.” That’s not cool. Having said that, who on earth thinks that former Patriot Rodney Harrison is objective? Find me a clip of Harrison saying Mac Jones is garbage, and then I'll change my mind. And while I get why people would be annoyed that Harrison pushed back on Jones’s saying Wilson was “special,” I give Harrison credit for not letting such a ridiculous comment go unchecked. If Harrison just sat there and nodded, viewers could’ve thought he agreed that Wilson is special.
Not only NBC. NFL should also be embarrassed. It is the true football fans who created this monster empire. It isn't up to NFL executives to pimp this league to celebrities.
Yeah enough with the Taylor Swift stuff. It feels very fake at this point anyways. Travis Kelce is a white guy who dresses and acts black and only dates black girls and she only dates country looking smart dudes. They also made it a point to over advertise her concert shit and give her an exclusive introduction video. As far as the broadcast goes I though Tirico and Collinsworth were fine. Lots of people hate Collinsworth for whatever reason. He does skew towards the better team but I think he’s a good analyst.
The NFL got almost everything it wanted, with the exception being that Goodell would have given a kidney to have Kelce catch a game winning TD in the final minute.
Mike Tirico is a great PxP announcer... but Collinsworth gets annoying by the 3rd quarter. As far as the broadcast itself... NBC deserves all the criticism they are getting. Fox Sports would never partake in such shameless promotion...
Mike Tirico’s also a sexual predator. No one knows about it either since it all happened pre-internet. I’m sure you’ve heard all about it in your production career though.
Glad to see someone calling out NBC for whatever that was last night. One of the most embarrassing televised events I think I've ever seen. Everyone who had a hand in it should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
Yeah... but that was back in the mid 90's... before I started working in sports television. I witnessed way more shenanigans when I worked in "entertainment" television...
Think about it, dude. They added a storyline to their broadcast to accompany the game. Who does that? Vince McMahon does that. I'm not ready to declare the NFL as Sports Entertainment yet, but that motherfucker is starting to quack.
Even more bizarre than the broadcast was Taylor Swift fans buying up tickets and driving up the resale market. If you wanted to see her, television was the only way. So freakin' ridiculous. Down right stupid. It's another reminder that a lot of people have a lot of money with not enough things to spend it on.
Starting to think that the league has truly jumped the shark. Not just this last game but also what the Super Bowl has become. It's no longer even about the game. It's about appealing to casuals who barely even watch during the regular season and are just looking for a reason to have people over, eat nachos and watch stupid commercials. I enjoy watching College ball so much more than the NFL.
