Online video shows absurdity of NFL policy
Steve Safran June 12th, 2007
Great work by the Houston Chronicle’s John McClain, who interviewed some Houston Texan football players and put together this video that shows just how silly the NFL’s draconian rules about online video use really are. You can only use brief clips of interviews, and the whole thing can’t exceed 45 seconds (which it does, anyway). The Texans play right along, which is really interesting considering it’s NFL policy we’re talking about. Even the team’s owner, Bob McNair, plays along. Interesting note: The YouTube version of this has already been taken down. (Thanks Jesse!)
6 Comments Add your own
1. Cory | June 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Hilarious and painfully true.
2. Doug | June 12th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Having listened to years of jock interviews on broadcast and cable TV, I’m sure the NFL has its players’ mental prowess in mind with their 45 second rule.
While some players are smart and articulate, more than 45 seconds would certainly drain the brain of many other players. Perhaps 15 seconds would be better. Maybe 5. “We came to play.” Hmmm. Three seconds oughta do it.
Indeed, instead of criticizing the NFL brass, we should embrace them for their obvious humanitarian concerns.
3. Allen | June 12th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Doug,
It’s more than just :45 seconds of bites we are missing out on. Now we can’t put up our NFL player feature pkgs because they all run well over that time limit.
And I wouldn’t paint all the players with such a broad brush.
4. Fred | June 12th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
How about John tries writing instead. If we wanted to see his pretty face he would be on TV. He’s a print reporter, he could have put all this information down in writing.
5. Alyssa | June 12th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
That was amusing. And a creative way to prove a point.
6. Tom Planchet | June 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Between this story and the story about the NCAA ejecting the live blogger, we are seeing a real line in the sand drawn with sports, most specifically the NFL, and the web.
This is a fairly new medium and they are trying to get their own brand in early. It’s what they would have done with television at its inception had they ever envisioned NFL on TV would be so big, and it’s what they ARE doing with TV slowly but surely as they siphon off NFL free games to the NFL Network.
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed