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Steve Cofield and his rebuttal to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk
By Zach Arnold | July 10, 2009
Mike Florio wrote an article on Friday night talking about Dana White’s assertion that UFC would gain more market traction than other sports, including the NFL on a global basis.
Steve Cofield of Yahoo Sports, who has provided more audio and video clips for UFC 100 coverage than anyone could possibly imagine, made his rebuttal to Florio here. He said this in closing:
Good for Mike, he got himself some links and hits. I bought into it. And there is zero going on in the NFL right now except waiting for Roger Goodell’s disciplinary rulings on the many crums who pollute the game.
It’s definitely true — with Steve McNair dying in a murder-suicide, with Donte Stallworth out of prison only after 24 days for manslaughter (he has two years of house arrest), with the Plaxico Burress shooting debacle in NYC, with Kevin & Pat Williams having problems with the Starcaps suspension situation that is lingering in the court system, Roger Goodell has a lot on his plate. (Not to mention the Michael Vick re-instatement situation.) And yes, Goodell didn’t help out matters by getting caught flat-footed with the McNair situation while he was hiking Mount Rainier in Washington for charity. There wasn’t anything Goodell could do about the McNair situation, but the visual wasn’t great.
MMA has had it fair share of criminals and fighters who have been in trouble with the law recently.
And if we are talking about UFC in terms of disciplining fighters who have gotten into extra-curricular trouble, well then things aren’t so hot there. Rampage Jackson, given his driving escapades, is the ultimate example of not receiving much punishment from the promoter. Then there’s Josh Neer and what he got involved in with a police chase (as Ivan Trembow points out Neer was recently given a four-fight contract), and don’t forget about Chris Leben who is still pushed as a ‘good guy’ by the promotion despite his legal record and getting busted for performance enhancers while being given the biggest push of his career in a top fight on a UK show. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson also is in some reported legal trouble.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 18 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
To expand on the point about Josh Neer, he got into a police chase that exceeded speeds of 100 miles per hour… while he was drunk. And it was not his first arrest related to drunk driving, according to the Wrestling Observer.
And what was the “disciplinary ruling” (as Steve Cofield put it) on Josh Neer? He got a four-fight contract extension.
What’s wrong about what Florio wrote? He’s absolutely right. The country where it has the biggest cultural impact is Japan, and even then its really below K-1 kickboxing, baseball, and soccer too. Meanwhile, the NFL has played to huge stadiums in Europe, Australia, and Japan. MLB has had numerous exhibitions in Japan as well to large crowds.
I like MMA plenty, but christ. Don’t make it such a part of your personality and being that you demand it become a primary sport in this or any other country.
MMA is never going to be on the same level as football or baseball. MMA fans who believe it’s going to achieve the same respect it does in Japan forget that Japanese culture values martial arts far more than Americans ever will. In America its level of violence is always going to hold it back.
I don’t think the NFL was responsible for Steve McNair anymore than the UFC should have been responible for Justin Eilers: he wasn’t an employee anymore. All he can do it make up some “SM” stickers to go on the back of helmets the same way all dead (then-active) NFL players get.
In a organization the size of professional sports leagues (UFC included) you can’t hold the league responsible for the actions of its employees. If some guy works at Wal Mart and robs a bank, is Wal Mart held accountable?
If you’ve ever been around athletes, you’ll know a good few of them are scumbags, so it is to be expected you’ll get a few Michael Vick’s, David Justice’s, Ron Artest’s or Lee Murray’s.
I guess I am late tho this party, ~sigh~ http://www.watchkalibrun.com/2009/7/11/945734/ufc-100-pre-fight-skrimish-mike
Zak, regarding your talk of the UFC’s significant success internationally…you are completely insane to say that the UFC has been more successful. As of right now, it looks like the UFC still hasn’t made any money overseas, just as the NFL didn’t with its NFL Europe league. However, the NFL Europe league was a far more impressive investment. It was a permanent sports league in multiple countries (eventually contracting to being primarily in Germany). The UFC has run once outside the Isles. Once! They’ve not run Asia at all under the current administration.
They have a China TV deal? Pfff. Its a crap network no one gets in the most sparsely populated region of the country. Its like if someone got a deal to show their MMA events on RFD TV stateside. The NFL is on state TV, available to all 1 billion plus people. Not to mention having a deal with Sky in England, NHK in Japan, Televisa and TV Azteca in Mexico, etc. They’re on in virtually every nation in the world other than North Korea, often on primary networks.
They’ve filled stadiums in Mexico City, Berlin, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. They’re expanding efforts to have international regular season games and the hot talk the last couple of years is a move for a team to Toronto, where they’d likely fill the Skydome for each home game.
Its impossible to argue that the UFC is a more successful internationally known brand than the NFL. Its just not true.
WHOA
Compare the UFC’s success, which is limited, to a FAILED LEAGUE
As in NFL Europa a league that folded and now the NFL is scrambling to try and build international interest by suggesting to hold the Super Bowl in London.
We are talking about relative comparisons that also fit in temporal time lines.
When you think about two years of UFC international expansion this is impressive. When you look at the NFL’s 18 years of attempted expansion and they are virtually in the same place as the UFC (as in they have to send their product overseas in limited amounts). How can you not look at that and say its a win for Zuffa?
And for god sake’s I was saying Florio was most of the time
NFL Europe ran for significantly longer than the UFC has been regularly running MMA shows on the continent. I mean, maybe they’ve made some inroads with UFC 99 over in Germany, but I’d bet money that the NFL is still a more well known entity than the UFC is, and definitely has a higher rate of public approval. Seriously, we’re gonna call the UFC merely getting shows off the ground proof of greater success now?
It is proven that the NFL is only an American Sport. There is little to no interest outside the 50 states.
Baseball is strong in Latin America and Asia. Basketball is strong in Europe.
So of the 3 Major American Sports, American Football is the only one who can’t really find success abroad.
With that said, it’s still pretty darn early to tell how the UFC will do internationally. Fertitta is definitly working on building the infostructure, but it’s still a ways off. My guess is that it could be 5 to 10 years before we see how successful everything Feritta is doing today. Getting on TV in other countries is absolutely the first step. And I doubt they will start off on the biggest channels. They need to work their way into each culture. Of course, having fighters from those countries will also help.
Since size is so important in football, it will always be an American-only sport. There’s 7 footers all over the world, but healthy 300 pounders who can run the 40 without gassing 25 in are strictly American. USA! USA! USA!
Yeah, when 45 is making a more sensible statement than you, you know something’s wrong with your argument. He’s right: Judging the success of the UFC as being greater than pretty much…god, any of the three major stick and ball sports here in the US when it comes to international reach is crazy talk. Can we wait a few years before we start talking about the UFC’s big inroads in countries they’ve barely been on TV in, much less run shows?
Another great “disciplinary ruling” (to use Steve Cofield’s words) from the UFC: Quinton Jackson dry-humps female interviewer Heather Nichols, then continues dry-humping her even after she repeatedly says to stop.
And Dana White’s “disciplinary ruling” on the matter (from the Observer’s recap of his Michael Landsberg interview): “White was ‘horrified’ by the Rampage Jackson interview incident with Heather Nichols, but also won’t talk to Jackson about it.”
Are you blaming McNair for being killed? Thats kind of low.
Here’s some breaking news. Arturo Gatti was found dead in a beach side flat in Brazil. His wife found his body with a head injury. The police consider the death and circumstances as being suspicion. Shit…
Yeah this is crazy. If an NFL player dry humped a female reporter it would be battling Michael Jackson coverage as the top news story of the month. But luckily for the UFC it hasn’t gone past viral video status.
And I remember a few months ago Zach was asking for idea for publicity for FightOpinion. Apparently, go pay some hot chick to get filmed being sexually harassed by a MMA fighter.
Maybe you can make Erin’s Andrei Arlovski dreams come true?
The last time the french-canadian media reported on Gatti, he was facing assault charge by his “ex”.
And now we are hearing that it was his wife that found him dead…
She must be one of the suspect.
He was on his honeymoon with his second wife.