Interesting tidbit from ESPN NFC West Blog

[CardsFan88]

Hadn't noticed this but while on the surface our schedule looks very appealing, there was one MAJOR (imo) drawback that slipped through the cracks. I haven't seen anything on this.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcwest/post/_/id/63426/evidence-piling-up-against-early-kickoffs

"2012 Early Wakeup Calls
Team 1 p.m. ET starts
Arizona 5
Oakland 5
Seattle 4
San Diego 4
Denver 4
San Francisco 3"

Yep, we have FIVE early games next year.

Granted 49ers won all theirs last season, but normally even good teams tend to lose these games.

Some data also from NFC west blog

"Games between teams from the same time zone saw the home team’s record hover around the NFL’s normal home-field advantage," Kacsmar writes. "The big news is the Eastern teams dominating the six Western teams, going 44-15 (.746) against Pacific, and 24-11 (.686) against the Mountain. Combined, that is a staggering 68-26 (.723) record against Western teams. ...

"If home-field advantage is only supposed to be around 57 percent (and Eastern teams are just .536 against Central teams), then this increase of over 15 percentage points for East vs. Western is clearly a significant advantage."

Hopefully we win all of them. But a realistic hope is that we win three of them.

They need to iron this out some way. Make more of these games the primetime games, or gasp, have more than one primetime game. If NBC/ESPN wants exclusivity, then pick the game that has a west coast team in it playing back east. Or they can have two teams like Fox/CBS and can split the games regionally. Any way you slice it, it needs to be addressed. Hell since they're going to play more thursday games, that too would be a good way to knock down some 10am games.

There's a major difference in people's body clocks as even professional athletes sometimes have problems gearing up for game so early. Sure east coast teams might be a bit more tired in primetime games on the west coast, but you can still be geared up and ready to play. Again there aren't nearly as many of those and it doesn't have the same negative impact as early games. They also pushed such east coast games earlier in the day a couple of years ago. So it east going west for primetime is even less of a detriment as it once was.

 

[Jetstream Green]

early wake up times for the dreaded East Coast Cardinals...yikes

 

[DoTheDew]

Fortunately, one of those is after our bye. Whiz should hold practice 3 hours early the whole bye week to prepare the team.

 

[AZ Native]

I don't mind the fans looking at the schedule and pointing it out. I would like to think a professional football player would look at it as a challenge do what it takes to overcome this minor obstacle. Win these games and gain an edge.

 

[JeffGollin]

As an east-coast fan:

I love the early kickoffs (because they end before 5pm ET and don't run into the dinner hour).

But before the end of Sept., they cut into my beach time.


From a team standpoint:

If playing early games is a problem (like snowy weather or opposing crowd noise) we'd better learn to deal with it if we ever want to consider ourselves a good FB team.

 

[crisper57]

As an east-coast fan:

I love the early kickoffs (because they end before 5pm ET and don't run into the dinner hour).

But before the end of Sept., they cut into my beach time.


From a team standpoint:

If playing early games is a problem (like snowy weather or opposing crowd noise) we'd better learn to deal with it if we ever want to consider ourselves a good FB team.

Also, as Daniel Tosh says:

It's hard being a Christian in the Pacific Time Zone (during football season).

 

[CardsFan88]

Also, as Daniel Tosh says:

It's hard being a Christian in the Pacific Time Zone (during football season) WHILE SITTING NAKED.

FTFY

 

[cardpa]

Simple solution is when a West coast team plays at a East coast team stadium the game has to start at 4PM so it would be like a 1PM start for the West coast team. If they want parity in the league then give the West coast team a fair chance when playing on the East coast. I personally like the later games since I am usually doing something earlier in the day so the 4PM start suits me fine.

 

[CardsFan88]

Simple solution is when a West coast team plays at a East coast team stadium the game has to start at 4PM so it would be like a 1PM start for the West coast team. If they want parity in the league then give the West coast team a fair chance when playing on the East coast. I personally like the later games since I am usually doing something earlier in the day so the 4PM start suits me fine.

Yeah why not break new ground and have games starting while another is ~halftime. Probably the best idea overall.

 

[JeffGollin]

Yeah why not break new ground and have games starting while another is ~halftime. Probably the best idea overall.

Back in the day, the Baltimore Colts started their home games at 2 pm ET.

 

[Duckjake]

Back in the day, the Baltimore Colts started their home games at 2 pm ET.

That's because they were pretending they were still in Cleveland. No wait once the team moved to Baltimore didn't Cleveland disown them?

 

[Darkside]

Hadn't noticed this but while on the surface our schedule looks very appealing, there was one MAJOR (imo) drawback that slipped through the cracks. I haven't seen anything on this.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcwest/post/_/id/63426/evidence-piling-up-against-early-kickoffs



Yep, we have FIVE early games next year.

Granted 49ers won all theirs last season, but normally even good teams tend to lose these games.

Some data also from NFC west blog


Hopefully we win all of them. But a realistic hope is that we win three of them.

They need to iron this out some way. Make more of these games the primetime games, or gasp, have more than one primetime game. If NBC/ESPN wants exclusivity, then pick the game that has a west coast team in it playing back east. Or they can have two teams like Fox/CBS and can split the games regionally. Any way you slice it, it needs to be addressed. Hell since they're going to play more thursday games, that too would be a good way to knock down some 10am games.

There's a major difference in people's body clocks as even professional athletes sometimes have problems gearing up for game so early. Sure east coast teams might be a bit more tired in primetime games on the west coast, but you can still be geared up and ready to play. Again there aren't nearly as many of those and it doesn't have the same negative impact as early games. They also pushed such east coast games earlier in the day a couple of years ago. So it east going west for primetime is even less of a detriment as it once was.

They mentioned that on Sirius when the schedule came out but I didn't want to poop all over everyone's optimism about our schedule. We have, I believe, the most early games out of any West team playing. It's a tougher schedule than it appears on first glance.