Perspective, Power Rankings and Big Problems

Yesterday's decisive loss to the Vikings wasn't expected - if the Niners are going to compete for a Super Bowl title, they'll need to start beating up on inferior road opponents with relative ease. However, considering yesterday's outbreak of upsets throughout the league, the "trap game" factor and the Metrodome always being a house of horrors for the 49ers, I'm not ready to make any pronouncements about San Francisco's supposed slip into mediocrity.

It's just one game - every team gets a couple of mulligans throughout the year, and an early-season stumble on the road isn't going to determine the course of the 2012 campaign. Super Bowls aren't won in September. Hell, they aren't even won in January anymore.

Did the 49ers look like crap in all three facets of the game? Absolutely. But a victory over the overhyped, loud-mouthed, playoff-choking Jets next Sunday will quickly erase the memories of yesterday's bed-wetting performance in Minneapolis.

As a result of yesterday's debacle, I'm sure the 49ers will fall several spots in this week's power rankings. And that's troubling. Not because of the Niners slipping in the rankings, but because there are actually "official" AP rankings in the first place. Last I checked, the NFL has a very fair and competitive playoff system - we don't need polls to let us know who is "Number One" because the postseason will determine that. These rankings are another transparent attempt by the sports media of creating a story instead of reporting it. The tendency for the media to overreact with every win and loss, especially early in the season, renders any power rankings as a completely worthless exercise, designed only to feed the 24/7 news cycle prior to the following week's Thursday night contest.

But giving any weight or credence to meaningless power rankings pales in comparison to the league's biggest (and most painfully obvious) issue, the completely inept replacement officials. Last week, Steve Young cited the league's inelastic demand as the reason the NFL isn't concerned with getting a new deal in place with the real officials. Viewers will tune in to every game, regardless of the product they are seeing on the field. And up until yesterday, that was certainly the case in my household.

But midway through the 4th quarter of the Vikings game, we decided to leave the house and run some Sunday errands. No biggie - the game's outcome wasn't really in doubt, and we figured we could knock out a few quick chores before settling in for the afternoon's contests. But a funny thing happened when we got home: the TVs stayed off. Instead, we listened to the (NL West Champion) San Francisco Giants game on the radio while cleaning up the garage. We'd rather listen to a ballgame than watch another football game, wondering after every play if a flag would be incorrectly thrown or an infraction was missed or improperly identified.

Quite simply, the brand of football that we are seeing on NFL Sundays (along with Thursdays and Mondays) has suffered to the point of being unreliable and baseless. And that leads to Roger Goodell's biggest problem - it's unwatchable. It's fake. It's phony. The trust is gone and the lunatics are running the asylum. Rather than improving from week to week, it only gets worse.

A league that prides itself in the integrity of the game has become a complete joke, all because of a few dollars in the pension fund for part-time employees. Until this issue is fixed, the NFL will continue to lose credibility and, eventually, viewers (money).

But hey, in the meantime, it's still baseball season!