Run to the Playoffs

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Run to the Playoffs is the brand name used by NFL Network for its schedule of live regular season telecasts of National Football League games on Thursday and Saturday nights.

The eight-game package debuted on November 23, 2006, with the Kansas City Chiefs handing the visiting Denver Broncos a 19-10 Thanksgiving defeat.

All games kick off at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Five games will air on Thursday nights, the other three on Saturday nights. (See schedule below.) Each game will be called either "Thursday Night Football" or "Saturday Night Football", depending on the night on which it appears.

Bryant Gumbel serves as play-by-play announcer, with Cris Collinsworth the color commentator. There is no sideline reporter, although Adam Schefter and Marshall Faulk of NFL Total Access have contributed from the field at various times. Dick Vermeil serves as color commentator for Saturday games.

Each game telecast is preceded by NFL Total Access on Location. Rich Eisen, Steve Mariucci, Deion Sanders, and Faulk report live from the site of each game. Schefter contributes insider information, and Kara Henderson and Michelle Beisner also contribute. The show generally begins three hours before game time (5 p.m. Eastern time).

The same Total Access team hosts the half-time and post-game shows.

Games are shown in approximately 50 million cable and satellite households, and on broadcast stations in the media markets of the participating teams. The home-team broadcast is technically subject to the NFL's blackout rule. However, since the games in the package generally feature top-flight teams which sell out their home games, it is unlikely that games will be blacked out.

These games can also be seen in Canada on TSN.

Westwood One provides national radio broadcasts for the games, with Dick Enberg calling play-by-play, Sam Wyche doing color, and Bonnie Bernstein on the sidelines for Thursday Night Football, and Joel Meyers and Kevin Kiley as the play-by-play and color team for Saturday Night Football.

Contents

[edit] Controversies

The move to air games on the NFL Network has received enormous criticism, for the following reasons:

[edit] Game Announcers

[edit] Television

(NFL Network)

[edit] Radio

(Westwood One)

[edit] 2006 results

[edit] Ratings

According to Nielsen Media Research, the Broncos-Chiefs game that opened this package was the highest-rated program on cable/satellite TV in the United States on November 23, 2006, with a 6.8 rating (among available households) and an average of 4.2 million households. These numbers are especially remarkable, considering that millions of potential fans were unable to see the game due to their cable systems not making it available to them.

Media Life magazine reported the second Thursday night game, Ravens/Bengals, dropped to 2.9 million households. Further numbers for Thursday night games were not reported, as they have not ranked in the weekly Top 25 lists for cable programming.

The first Saturday matchup (Cowboys/Falcons) attracted 2.9 million households, placing it seventh for the week among cable broadcasts. [1]

[edit] Trivia

  • Because the NFL owns the network, it did not pay a rights fee for the eight-game package. The other TV deals generated $3.735 billion per year over an eight-year period for CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and DirecTV.
  • TNT, ESPN2 and Versus (the former OLN) were reportedly interested in these games before they were awarded to NFL Network.
  • NFL Network also presented two preseason games, using the staff that now works on this package. Spero Dedes was the play-by-play announcer, Sterling Sharpe was the analyst, and Kara Henderson was the sideline reporter.
  • The mention of the starting lineups resembles the movement of a conveyor belt.
  • Harry Kalas provides his voice to the telecast when the sponsors are mentioned. Kalas also calls NFL games for Westwood One and is a longtime contributor to NFL Films.

[edit] 2006 coverage summary

  • Vermeil, in his first substitute assignment, was fighting laryngitis during the Week 15 Falcons-Cowboys matchup. He called the first quarter with Gumbel, but Marshall Faulk was brought into the booth during the second quarter, presumably to help Vermeil carry his load. At halftime, both Faulk and Deion Sanders were missing from the halftime show, replaced by Adam Schefter. In the beginning of the third quarter, Sanders joined Gumbel and Faulk in the booth for the rest of the game, and Vermeil was sent home. Vermeil returned for the following week's Chiefs-Raiders game.
  • After the Cowboys-Falcons game, Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens came to the Total Access set and acknowledged spitting in the face of Falcons' cornerback DeAngelo Hall early in the contest. There is no video, from that night's telecast or any other source, that is known to have captured the incident, but Owens was fined $30,000 by the NFL.
  • Quarterback Brett Favre visited the set after the Packers' defeat of the Vikings in Week 16. Favre briefly embraced Mariucci, his former position coach with the Packers, but did not speak with the show's cast, or, for that matter, anyone else in the media. At the time, it was believed to be possibly his last home game as an NFL player, however, Favre announced his intention to return to the Packers for the 2007 season two days before Super Bowl XLI.
  • Before the Vikings-Packers game, Schefter reported that the Oakland Raiders had begun the process to fire head coach Art Shell. The Raiders then protested, saying that Schefter was not a trusted source and that his judgment was colored by his professional relationship with Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, who the Raiders fired in 1989, ironically to be replaced by Shell. Schefter stood by his reporting, and indeed on January 3, 2007, the Raiders fired Shell.
  • At one point, Bryant Gumbel called San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore "Al Gore".

[edit] Future plans

NFL Network will continue to broadcast Run to the Playoffs through the 2012 season. It is obviously hoping to sign the carriage deals with the holdout cable companies so that more potential viewers will be available for the coming seasons. In that vein, the free preview of the network, which ran from December 24 through December 30, 2006, ended at kickoff of the Giants-Redskins game. The broadcast was unnecessary in the target market of the New York tri-state area because it was available on a local television station in the area. (The NYC area did not carry the free preview week outside of the Texas Bowl game, which was the only way local college football fans could watch Rutgers play in the game.)

The 2007 season opener will be the Indianapolis Colts at the Atlanta Falcons on Thanksgiving night, November 22, 2007. Not only is this a potential matchup of superstar quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Michael Vick, it is also the first game on the network between one team in the AFC and another in the NFC. All eight games in 2006 were between conference teams, and in all but one, both opponents played in the same division.

NFL Network will also carry the AFC-NFC Hall of Fame Game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints on August 5, 2007.

[edit] External links

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