Exhibition Football: America Is Making a Display of Itself

At a time when we are looking for friends among our allies, West and East, one pauses to inquire how this is going to be accomplished if we continue to give them exhibition pro football.

It is bad enough that exhibition games have polluted the American scene. Now we move these presentations into London, Tokyo, Berlin and the like, meaning it is only a matter of time that we, in the family of nations, will be standing naked in the world.

“But putting an American product abroad improves the trade deficit,” we are told.

The foreigners will soon respond: “Look, if you will keep your exhibition games out of here, we will call the debt square.”

“Do you mean we don’t have to pay for all the cars, cameras, 50-inch TVs and gin?”

“Not if you keep exhibition games within your own borders.”

Last weekend, the exhibition season opened with something billed as the Hall of Fame game. The Hall of Fame game at Canton, Ohio, is played each year on a high school field, offering atmosphere too sophisticated for what transpires in the match.

ABC televises the game, getting even with society for drawing the blinds while ABC was losing the forthcoming Olympics.

To offer an insight into the network’s profound respect for the Hall of Fame game, it invited to the booth last Saturday former players just inducted into pro football’s shrine.

One by one, the guests were interviewed. All the while, the game is going on, featuring the Bears and the Browns, without commentary from those in the booth, occupied with the interviews.

Were those watching at home distressed by what was happening? Not in the least. The interviews were an improvement over the game.

Viewers of the Hall of Fame match got lucky one year. Lightning invaded the area and the game was called off in the third quarter.

Watching the Bears and the Browns last Saturday, you kept calling the meteorological station, inquiring about the weather.

You were hoping to luck out again.

At Tokyo, where the Broncos were matched against the Seahawks, you had no chance. The game was played in a dome.

And outdoors in London, the Raiders and Saints catch a perfect evening, 65 degrees at kickoff. There is no reason to cut it short. Each has a chartered plane waiting.

You pined for the old days in baseball when games were called prematurely because a team had a train to catch.

For a long time now, exhibition games have posed a problem for pro football, whose tactical staffs seize the occasions to study new players and introduce new offense.

But fans take the position that is the problem of the coach. The problem of the fan is being exposed to, and paying for, a practice field exercise.

This is especially the case in an age in which purchase of exhibition game tickets is mandatory if one wants to retain his stadium location during regular season.

People have gone to court to try to break this form of packaging, charged as an illegal tie-in.

But the defendants have prevailed on the ground that the tie-in is not illegal because it is linked to football, the product purveyed.

If a team specified that in order to keep your stadium location you must purchase, in addition to your tickets, a vacuum cleaner, you would be looking at an illegal tie-in.

A while back, teams in the NFL played 14 regular season games and six exhibitions, but when fans grew mutinous, that format was changed to 16 and four, the present arrangement.

Sentiment exists among some owners to shift to 18 and two, more palatable to customers, but coaches protest, insisting that they need at least four exhibitions to evaluate their team.

Idly, one inquires about college coaches. How are they able to evaluate, and condition, their livestock entirely on the practice field? Do USC and Notre Dame play four exhibitions?

Instead of taking to our friends abroad the better things related to American culture, we are palming off on them trash called exhibition football, without even footnotes explaining this is makeshift merchandise involving a lot of guys who won’t even be seen in the NFL a month from now.

We are taking advantage of people who, not conversant with U.S. football, come forth trustingly, assuming we are giving them our best.

How would you like the Japanese to sell you a car made partly by qualified engineers and partly by guys walking along the Ginza?

Now you buy a British suit.

“No doubt, this features your finest Saville Row tailoring?” you ask.

“Not exactly,” you are told. “A top craftsman worked on the suit for the first quarter. The rest was done by help drifting in from Bangladesh and Nigeria.”

“But it cost me 1,800 bucks,” you complain.

“Indeed. And we paid full price for your football game.”