Ben Gilbert

Still before ESPN.

Well, well before ESPN.

10 years.

So yeah, that's still far off in the future.

But ABC is clearly interested in sports.

That appeals to the widest range of people.

And that we still don't know for sure that the NFL is that.

And just to keep tracking our baseball versus football comparison, this moment in 1970 is right around the time where the NFL is eclipsing baseball to become America's favorite sport.

It's been slowly gaining ground over the last 30 years, and the merger plus the creation of the Super Bowl really puts the NFL here squarely in the lead, making it the

Indeed.

You're seeing different games in different markets.

There's not a national event to watch because the way the local affiliate works, it's still at this point in time where you can't watch a home game at home.

So whatever is on TV in your city is wherever your team is playing if they're playing an away game and no NFL on Sunday if your team is playing a home game.

Either you're going to the NFL game on Sunday or it's a non-event for you that week.

And the broadcasts, other than the Super Bowl, and honestly, even kind of the Super Bowl at this point in time, are pretty bad.

We talked earlier about they got better and they learned.

They didn't learn much.

They were still referred to around this period of time, 1970, as football in a cathedral.

You had no fun camera angles.

You probably had three, maybe four cameras in the entire broadcast.