The NFL coaching roulette wheel started to spin pretty violently yesterday, with DeMeco Ryans heading to the Texans now that San Francisco’s season is over, which left Sean Payton’s path to Denver open. Though that path was a two-way street, given the draft picks the Broncos had to send back to New Orleans for the pleasure of Payton’s company and their desire to go for now/burn their present and future into ash.
These days, following NFL media takes a little more media literacy than it used to, which is obviously not a strength of this country. “Insiders” mostly are just bullhorns and amplifiers for either GMs or agents and what they want in the bloodstream. They don’t really “break” stuff anymore so much as serve the purpose of those they supposedly report on. So an NFL fan, if they’re so inclined, has to not just read whatever’s breaking or rumors, but who those reports and buzz serve. It’s not just the news, but whom the news benefits.
Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport weigh in
After Payton was hired by the Broncos, Ian Rapoport tweeted that the Broncos had gone back to Ryans to offer him their head coaching job that very day. When he stuck with the Texans — that says a lot about the Broncos and Russell Wilson right now — then they turned back to Payton.
Now, Rapoport isn’t above this slush either, but when focusing on just this report of the Broncos throwing themselves and most of their underwear at Ryans, one has to see who would want that out there. Maybe the Texans front office, maybe Ryans, just to make it seem to Texans fans that they’ve really pulled a coup here. But given that the Broncos are such a mess, this isn’t all that hard to believe.
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Of course, Schefter was all too ready to do…well, we can speculate that it’s the Broncos’ bidding.
There were only 13 minutes between the two tweets, but one can easily see who exactly would want the info that Schefter is pumping. The Broncos definitely don’t want to look like the idiots that they probably are, and hence would rush to get out the message of “We know exactly what we’re doing!” as quickly as possible. And where does an organization turn to get its message out through a bunch of social media half-stacks? Schef-baby!
It’s easy enough for anyone to piece this together, given that the Broncos recently tried to get Jim Harbaugh out of Michigan after he said he wasn’t leaving Ann Arbor. They didn’t really want to hire Payton, they just did. But they can’t look like they’re merely settling for what they could find, and there’s only one route for a team’s propaganda these days.
In the words of The Dude, “It’s like Lenin said..you look for the person that would benefit, and you..uh, uh…you know what I’m trying to say.”
Great week for MLB broadcasting
Just a few days after MLB came face-to-face with the fact that half its teams are going to be out of their local TV deals thanks to Diamond Sports Group going four legs to the air comes the news that YouTube TV is dropping MLB Network. But MLB hasn’t really been interested in how many people are actually watching their games, that’s the networks’ problem.
YouTube TV has some five million subscribers, which is a number you’d think MBL would be interested in keeping available to watch their very own station. MLB Network has a few games per week on the channel, if they get around local blackout rules (which may be going away anyway). Via TBS, MLB Network, ESPN, and FOX, baseball fans who didn’t have the Extra Innings package or MLB.TV could get their fair helping of out-of-market games and keep up to date with what was going on. Maybe this is part of MLB’s plan if they do indeed soak up the Sinclair orphans once that bankruptcy is declared, getting more people to MLB.tv, especially if the blackout rules are zapped.
Still, MLB isn’t really in a place to be punting viewers who could easily access their product. Then again, foresight isn’t really their thing.
