Here’s an only-in-July question that came up Wednesday morning during my weekly visit with The Mack Attack on WFNZ in Charlotte: If NFL broadcasts were to dump all commercial breaks but replace them with an infiltration of advertisements into the broadcast itself, would that be a fair trade?
More specifically, the game would never (or, at most, rarely) go to commercial. In turn, for example, the uniforms would contain corporate logos, the field would have ads superimposed over it before the snap, the static TV score/time graphics would include sales messages, and the announcers would periodically read promotions between plays or during natural breaks in the action.
With the NFL already tightening up the game-viewing experience to prevent an ADD-addled nation from changing the channel or otherwise finding something else to watch on their phone, tablet, laptop, whatever, why not go all the way and never take a break while instead flooding the screen with a flurry of pitches that actually may fit better with rewired American brains that routinely process multiple different streams of information at once?
Whether it ever happens or not, this is the kind of thinking in which the league will need to engage as it strikes the balance between keeping the game moving and keeping the cash flowing. At some point, never leaving the game may be the only way to keep fans from doing the same.