Pre-Season: Pro Football's Dog & Pony Show

The arrival of pre-season feels akin to attending a wedding, only to have the bride or groom not show up. NFL teams used to play six pre-season games, until the league had the sense to shorten it by a pair, as stars were increasingly going down with season ending injuries on some meaningless Friday night exhibition in August. The Commissioner is now considering trimming it by two (good), extending the regular season (not so good) and having the Super Bowl well into February (definitely bad). Somewhere in the league charter, maintaining the quality of the game over maximizing the quantity of its revenue should take priority, at least some of the time. Less could be more. 2 pre-season games and 15 regular games (no kiss-your-sister 8-8 records), winding up before the holidays, is a good enough schedule. 10 of 32 teams is sufficient playoff representation but tinkering with adding a wild card game from each conference is far preferable to watching 4-11 and 6-9 also-rans pretend there is anything still left in the Christmas stockings. By late January, particularly after the marathon college bowl season, most fans have basically had a belly full of football. The Super Bowl should wind up the month, with the Pro Bowl held the week before, becoming much less of a bore in that off week time slot. February's stars should be the models in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. Shockey and Vilma had good games for the Saints the other night - but so what, they are known commodities. The talent evaluation / injury risk reward ratio for teams is terrible. A Saints nightmare would be if a Drew Brees were to twist a knee while needlessly playing in the third quarter against the Raiders in a few weeks. Proven veterans need no more than 1-2 quarters in the pre-season, combined, to tune up for the season opener. Teams bring in about double the bodies to training camp that they end up keeping on the final roster. Pre-season games should be devoted to the development of the rookies and free agents trying to make the team; these players already are hindered by limited scrimmage snaps in practice. Some players simply play better than they practice, and vice versa. Pre-season may ultimately yield a keeper or two, which is now less likely given the selective time they get, mostly against other back-ups. As a fan, I'd rather see how the Saints' second liners fare against opponents' starters, to estimate how good a prospect really is, or how much depth the team really has (and imagine the coaches would too). But the collusion and illusion of importance - of playing starters with ascending amounts of playing time over each game is the established futility of pre-season. The media certainly does its due diligence in reporting on pre-season, looking for team trends and scoops on personnel, mostly in vain. Ultimately, it is August's hot air. Last year WR Robert Meachem was supposedly having a "break-out" pre-season after being the team's top draft pick in '07 and unceremoniously not even dressing out his rookie year, though not injured. Not intending to pick on the kid, but his locker room nickname may as well be Casper, as his career remains a ghost of potential. The Lions went 4-0 last pre-season, and had not won a game since, until beating the Falcons on the last play in an exhibition Saturday. Teams would generate good will amongst their regional fan bases by playing pre-season games in their locales. Send 'dem Saints to play the Texans in Lafayette, the Cowboys in Shreveport, the Titans in Jackson, or the Jaguars in Mobile. The majority of season ticket holders would much rather write their not so small checks for the regular season games they want instead of adding on for a few pre-season games they don't. And then there are the rookie hold-outs. The Saints' Malcolm Jenkins, the team's most important defensive draft pick in years, missed 10 days or so of training camp and wasn't even fit enough to play the other night. At their worst, hold-outs can get a rookie's career off to an irreversible bad step, as many feel the case has been with LSU's JaMarcus Russell. If the Commissioner and Players Association had any collective resolve on the matter, like a deadline for signing bonuses being the start of training camp and/or half a season with no compensation, top draft picks would report to camp on time like plebes. It's not like 90 days after the draft isn't enough time for general managers and agents to knock heads over a deal; most of the time the stickling points are how much of the contracts are guaranteed. The NFL is blessed with an adoring fan base and an eager to please media advertising the league as news as much as entertainment, a quite lucrative business model. It's high time the league quits staying soft on the pretension and mediocrity that is pre-season.