TV REVIEW: 'NFL FULL CONTACT'

New Reality Sports Show on TruTV Constitutes Harassment

By: Josh Moorhead

February 17, 2010

So you miss the NFL. It’s only been a week, but it’s gone and you feel it like holes in your soul. The NBA All-Star game just wouldn’t do. Catching Avatar for the bajillionth time? Nada. So here comes TruTV to save you with their new reality, weekly, hour-long NFL Full Contact.

It’s no secret to sports fans that the NFL is the definitive champion amongst major American sports. Its revenue and viewership make even something like the NBA’s All-Star Weekend pale in comparison. It turns out that, in terms of its following at least, football is America’s pastime. The NFL leadership knows this and will push the interest level of the public to the breaking point for an extra buck. We’ve found that breaking point.

Full Contact is an unwanted advance in the viewer’s personal space on the part of the NFL. It’s like the league misinterpreted our affection and jocularity with it for something more, and now…well, I, at least, feel harassed.

The show goes behind the scenes of a given NFL game to make mountains out of molehills, making the missteps and false conflict of reality TV transparent mostly due in part to the fact that these conflicts are so thin.

Case in point: in the premiere, at one point we’re presented with a sideline camera man who has to eat before game-time! Because if he doesn’t eat, he’ll have to wait four hours to! FOUR HOURS, PEOPLE! Panic sets in. Where will he go?! Will he starve?!?!?!

OMG! Oh wait, there’s a cafeteria filled with free catered food in the heart of the stadium.

Yes. This really happens. We also learn that some people in the business of producing entertainment are prickish. Startling revelation. Other conflicts include trying to find footballs. Literally. In a football stadium. Or providing privacy for Fergie. Yes, not even scantly clad Fergie can redeem this show.

Full Contact means to make compelling drama of what we don’t see behind the scenes of putting together a NFL broadcast, but you just can’t feel sympathy for people who make exponentially more than you to hang out with Snoop Dogg and Ben Rothelisberger and be on TV while doing it.

It doesn’t help that you can feel some of these behind-the-scenes people, especially the NFL producer and sideline cameraman, see a glint of spotlight and oversell for screen-time and elusive and worthless reality show fame. In fact, almost the whole of reality TV has gone to a place where Americans don’t watch to see the lifestyles of the rich and famous or their dreams televised, but to laugh at the Snookis and Ray Jays and New Yorks of the world to feel better about themselves… It’s not hero-worship — it’s self-assurance. “Well, I might just be a claims adjuster when I really wanted to be a famous record producer, but at least I’m not these poor goons.” In America, there is now fame, the rest of us, and sub-fame. I guess there’s already a word for this — infamy — but here not in the sense of villains but of fools.

But there I go trying to be a famous writer. I guess in simpler phrasing I’m trying to say that, unfortunately, since the NFL is one of my passions, Full Contact is pitiful. It’s boring, false, and at times annoying. To be sure, not everyone we meet behind the scenes is some prima-donna; many of them are just regular Joes and Joe-ettes trying to do their job with a camera suddenly thrust in their face, but no worry — that camera won’t be there for long, I promise you.

Since coming to Hollywood, my respect for behind-the-scenes people has grown exponentially, which isn’t to say I didn’t respect them before, but I’ve learned how much work they really do. Full Contact doesn’t serve as that enlightening experience, and it, in fact, breaks a cardinal rule of entertainment magic — don’t let them in on the illusion. Full Contact serves to seep the joy out of illusion and the sleekness out of spectacle. To borrow another line from another line of work, the American Congress: “No one wants to see how the sausage is made.” And NFL fans love their sausage. So TruTV, don’t ruin it for them.

I’m convinced there are compelling stories behind the NFL scenes, but they’re likely found in locker-rooms, players’ home lives, in owners offices — and even then I’m not sure I’d stake capital in the reality show venture. The drama, as it usually is in sports, is best left for the field.

But if you miss that field, NFL Full Contact does offer a cure — it makes you not miss the game at all. Good, now I can totally affix my attention to LeBron James.