01-19-2018, 04:25 AM
Jaguars vs. Vikings sounds like an early-October London game with a 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff (6:30 a.m. on the West Coast!) that you didn't even know was on the schedule until noon, when you realize you forgot to add Kyle Rudolph to your fantasy lineup.
Blake Bortles vs. Case Keenum sounds like a Thursday Night Football quarterback showdown scheduled against baseball's ALCS, a snoozer that ends in a 22-13 final score thanks to seven field goals. Who won? Who cares!
When you walk into a bar with the satellite package and 100 televisions on Sunday afternoon, Jaguars-Vikings should be the game that's on in the back corner of the dining area, watched only by a dude in a faded Maurice Jones-Drew jersey whose girlfriend never looks up from her smartphone.
But it could also be the matchup in Super Bowl XLII in two weeks.
How, oh how, did we fall so far from grace?
Now, before anyone panics, a couple of fellows named Tom Brady and Bill Belichickstill stand between us and the End of Days, not to mention the pesky Philadelphia Eagles and their fanbase, which has somehow managed to grow even more unhinged over the last five days.
Football Outsiders projects just a 14.6 percent chance of a Vikings-Jaguars Super Bowl, a figure that jibes with the Vegas moneylines (Vikings a slight favorite, Jaguars a heavy-but-not-prohibitive underdog) but, on a subconscious level, feels too high. Our brains shriek at us that the likelihood of a Vikings-Jaguars Super Bowl should be roughly 0.0000000000003 percent, roughly the same as being struck by lightning twice after cashing our fifth straight winning Powerball ticket.
That's because our primitive brains evolved to predict migration patterns on the African plains millennia ago, making them short-circuit when coping with the pace of modern life. Just as social media and the 24-7 news cycle cause severe anxiety, the possibility of a Jaguars-Vikings Super Bowl causes dislocation and dissonance: Human minds just aren't evolutionarily equipped for both of these teams to be good at the same time.
The NFL itself might not be equipped for a showdown between the 15th-ranked (Minneapolis-St. Paul) and 42nd-ranked (Jacksonville) television markets in the nation, as determined by Nielsen. The Vikings and Jaguars home markets combined (2,431,320 TV homes) are smaller than the Eagles home market (2,869,580). Unlike smaller-market teams like the Steelers or Packers, the Vikings and Jaguars have tiny national fan footprints.
You may have heard somewhere that NFL ratings are down: Last weekend's divisional round playoff games, for example, drew the smallest television audience since 2009, despite three dramatic games and a traditional Patriots beating. Some will insist the cause is political—some want very, very badly for it to be political—but besides an overall change in national viewing habits, the NFL's biggest problem this season has been disappointing years by popular teams and injuries to Aaron Rodgers-level must-watch superstars.
Blake Bortles vs. Case Keenum sounds like a Thursday Night Football quarterback showdown scheduled against baseball's ALCS, a snoozer that ends in a 22-13 final score thanks to seven field goals. Who won? Who cares!
When you walk into a bar with the satellite package and 100 televisions on Sunday afternoon, Jaguars-Vikings should be the game that's on in the back corner of the dining area, watched only by a dude in a faded Maurice Jones-Drew jersey whose girlfriend never looks up from her smartphone.
But it could also be the matchup in Super Bowl XLII in two weeks.
How, oh how, did we fall so far from grace?
Now, before anyone panics, a couple of fellows named Tom Brady and Bill Belichickstill stand between us and the End of Days, not to mention the pesky Philadelphia Eagles and their fanbase, which has somehow managed to grow even more unhinged over the last five days.
Football Outsiders projects just a 14.6 percent chance of a Vikings-Jaguars Super Bowl, a figure that jibes with the Vegas moneylines (Vikings a slight favorite, Jaguars a heavy-but-not-prohibitive underdog) but, on a subconscious level, feels too high. Our brains shriek at us that the likelihood of a Vikings-Jaguars Super Bowl should be roughly 0.0000000000003 percent, roughly the same as being struck by lightning twice after cashing our fifth straight winning Powerball ticket.
That's because our primitive brains evolved to predict migration patterns on the African plains millennia ago, making them short-circuit when coping with the pace of modern life. Just as social media and the 24-7 news cycle cause severe anxiety, the possibility of a Jaguars-Vikings Super Bowl causes dislocation and dissonance: Human minds just aren't evolutionarily equipped for both of these teams to be good at the same time.
The NFL itself might not be equipped for a showdown between the 15th-ranked (Minneapolis-St. Paul) and 42nd-ranked (Jacksonville) television markets in the nation, as determined by Nielsen. The Vikings and Jaguars home markets combined (2,431,320 TV homes) are smaller than the Eagles home market (2,869,580). Unlike smaller-market teams like the Steelers or Packers, the Vikings and Jaguars have tiny national fan footprints.
You may have heard somewhere that NFL ratings are down: Last weekend's divisional round playoff games, for example, drew the smallest television audience since 2009, despite three dramatic games and a traditional Patriots beating. Some will insist the cause is political—some want very, very badly for it to be political—but besides an overall change in national viewing habits, the NFL's biggest problem this season has been disappointing years by popular teams and injuries to Aaron Rodgers-level must-watch superstars.
