Chapter 1: What brings Scott Hanson to Melbourne?
Now, back to Whiteley. Here we go. Hi, everyone. Welcome to week one of the 2009 NFL season and welcome to NFL Red Zone. I'm your host, Scott Hanson. You're watching the first moments of the channel that we hope will change the way you watch football forever.
And so it did, Scott. a unique television property that so many of you will know well, NFL Red Zone. The host is Scott Hanson. Scott, it's great to meet you.
Chapter 2: How does Scott compare Australian sports fandom to American football?
Welcome to SCN.
Oh, Jared, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Honored to be with someone with so many broadcasting credentials here down here in this continent and mix the two together is a beautiful thing. How's your Melbourne trip been? Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
So I'm here on about a week-long tour, courtesy of my friends at Visit Victoria and NFL Australia New Zealand, kind of in advance of the Rams and Niners coming in September to the G. And I told you right before we came on air, I've been to about 40 different countries already. Australia, I would put it right next to the United States in terms of sports fandom.
Like the majority of the populace liking the majority of world sports and liking them at the highest level.
Chapter 3: What are Scott's impressions of Aussie rules football?
Australians are just like Americans in that regard. And that's why I think it's going to be a perfect marriage when the NFL plays its first ever game here.
Your takeover of Thursday Night Footy on Channel 7 was quite brilliant. Oh, thank you. Thank you. When you... When you've had the full, well, that was 75,000 at the G. You'll get more than that for the NFL game. When you left, what impression did it leave you with?
The atmosphere is going to be one of maybe, I can't say the best. Let's let it play out.
Chapter 4: How does Scott feel about the upcoming NFL game in Australia?
But you got to understand, that will be the biggest crowd ever. that either Brock Purdy or Matthew Stafford, the quarterbacks, have ever played in front of. Maybe even going back to their college days. Kind of a weird thing in the United States. I'm sure you know this. Maybe the listeners don't. College stadiums can be bigger than the pro stadiums in America. It just kind of works out that way.
There are no NFL stadiums that hold 100,000 or more people. So the atmosphere there, just by the sheer number of people, and then the mixture of people, the Americans who come over to experience Australia for the first time, the expats that live here that love the NFL that's like, hey, the game's now where I live.
And then the Australian NFL fans who make a life change every September through January to wake up in the middle of the night on Monday morning to watch NFL football. You put that amount of passion together, it's going to be a chemistry explosion on September 11th. It's going to be fantastic. What did you think of Aussie rules? I liked it.
You know, I'm a novice, so I did understand that most games do not finish in draws. What did you think about draws? In fact, most games do not finish in draws after the siren, as a matter of fact. In fact, somebody told me that it was like, there's only like...
like less than 10 games in the history of the AFL had been a draw with the tying points scored after the siren, if I said that correctly. I love the game. In fact, I'm hooked now. I'm going to start watching it back in the United States. I need to learn. The marks are the thing that I love the most. Goals, of course, but the marks to set up the field position like that are fantastic.
I am in the dark, though, when it comes to what you're allowed to do opponent against opponent before the mark is made, during the mark, and then after the mark. I'm like, wait, he hit him.
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Chapter 5: What unique aspects of NFL Red Zone does Scott discuss?
It didn't look like it was that bad. Wait a minute. I need some refinement when it comes to my knowledge.
I'm not sure you'll ever find satisfaction on that front. Is it like the NFL? You probably tiptoed into a rather large debate there. Let me invite you into another debate. Should we have played overtime on Thursday night?
Yeah, so I've already been asked that question since the game. We have, we call them ties in the United States. We have ties in the NFL in the regular season. Nobody likes them. But it's a balance of how many more game minutes do you want to expose the players' bodies to in a very physical sport, AFL and NFL. versus determining a winner at all costs, playing long into the night.
If they could present a format where you could have a winner no matter what, I am all for, you played for two hours, three hours, let's determine a victor each and every time we hit the grass. But what's the best format you've ever heard of in AFL to come up with a drawbreaker?
Yeah, so we have three minutes either way in the finals and on grand final day, and we would do that over and over until we got a winner. In rugby league, they play golden points, so next score wins. Do you like that or no? I'm not a personal advocate for that. I like the three minutes either way.
Okay. And that's what we do in the NFL. We will play infinite overtimes in the NFL and playoffs until we get a winner. But regular season, they're just going to shut it down after a while because of the physicality.
Anyway, I've walked you into a debate there. Tell me, you did the Sporting Globe the other night, so you've had face-to-face with the passion for the NFL in this country. What impression has it left you with?
Absolutely. Kind of like I said, the Australian fans ā
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Chapter 6: How does Scott describe the 'witching hour' of NFL games?
it is a life choice to follow the NFL waking up at, if you're with me, depending on what time zone, you know, you're in, what time of year it is, like 3 a.m. on Monday. And the fans, we did Q&A and we had, I mixed with fans afterwards, just chatting them up. They have deep, deep knowledge of their respective teams. And it was like, you don't need to impress me anymore. I get it.
You know your squad and that you are all in. The other thing I loved I'm guessing 32 teams in the NFL, I'm guessing I saw jerseys from 26, 28, just at the Sporting Globe on our fan appearance there that night. I guarantee at the G, all 32 teams are going to be represented, which is a beautiful thing for the United States.
We love our NFL football, but we really enjoy it when we see other people that come from different backgrounds, a different part of the world, embracing the sport that we've loved for so long. And there are Australian fans that tell me they've been watching 20, 25 years, 30 years. That's a beautiful thing. And it brings people together.
I don't know how you guys are in Australia, but we are a very divided country. Ideologically, politically, in the United States, boy, are we divided. The one thing in our society that brings us together is sport. And in the U.S., the number one thing in sport that brings us together is NFL football. So we're going to merge two continents in September, and the world will be watching.
I just hope that the game, the Rams and the Niners, they play a game worthy of what we know the environment and the atmosphere will be. Red zone. Yes, sir.
So I've stood on your set. I've stood at your desk, actually. I'm not trying to take my job. The... So it is a unique property in sports broadcasting and the way that it started, seven hours commercial free. What's the question you get asked most?
Oh, I think you know what it is.
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Chapter 7: What is Scott's perspective on the popularity of the NFL?
Pardon the pun. The number one question I get in my life is, when do I go to the bathroom? Some people say, hey, Scott, my girlfriend and I love the show. We watch all the time. How do you go to the bathroom? I say, it's not the how. It's the when. And the reality is I dehydrate myself before the show. I do not take a bathroom break.
I have not taken a bathroom break on Red Zone in more than a decade. And I could, right? Jared, you work with great professionals here. I have a great staff on NFL Red Zone. They could work the games to where... Okay, we're just going to stay with the Dallas Cowboys for a little while here, go to the men's room for two minutes.
But the thing is, my earpiece, we call it IFB, my earpiece is wireless, and I could still hear the games if I left the studio and went down the hallway, and I am convinced. that if I ever break my streak and go down the hallway, I'm going to hear from one of the stadiums somewhere in the country, that may be the greatest touchdown in the history of the NFL.
And I'm going to be zipping up my fly, running back down the hallway, going, I can't believe it. I knew it was going to happen. So I do not leave. I get locked into the football, and I just focus with the willpower of a ninja for seven straight hours to try and bring the audience the best of the NFL. That's beautiful. What makes for a great Sunday? Oh, I love a good, we call it the early window.
So I guess let's say 3 a.m. Monday morning in most of Australia, 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. But that 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. slice, we've dubbed it the witching hour.
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Chapter 8: What other sports does Scott enjoy besides NFL?
And it's the end of the third quarter all the way to the end of the games in the early window. So give me an eight game early window. We show the Octobox, as I've dubbed it, which is eight games on the screen simultaneously. And then... Four, five, six of them can be coming down to the wire with the trailing team possessing the football. No timeouts. It is rat-a-tat-tat.
For the fans that don't like the NFL because of the stop-start nature of it, Red Zone cures all of that because it's nonstop action. And then when it's frenetic at the end of games and we can't decide which game we go to, so we put two on the screen at the same time or three on the screen at the same time, and you guys are howling at home watching, You know, whoa, do you see that?
We're doing the same thing in the studio. That is the perfect alchemy for an NFL Sunday for me. The witching hour in an eight-game early window. And it always seems to deliver.
How would you describe the surging popularity of the sport? So from 2009, just in your window, we saw 800,000 people at the draft. Wow. We see the top 100 television shows and 93 of them. Oh, you've shown that? Isn't that amazing or what? So there's the how and the why. So it's always been an important sport in the country. Correct. But the magnitude of it feels to have grown.
Look, I think there's many aspects of it. I could speak from the American psyche, I think. The American sports fan loves everything done at the very highest level. And if you want to talk kind of metaphysically about it, I would say this ā We as human beings love to see something that has never been physically done.
Everyone that's able to has run in a straight line as fast as they can, whether they were 10 years old or they do it professionally at 25 or 28 years old. Everyone's the everyone that can jump has tried to jump and touch the top of the ceiling at some point. Right. The fastest, most explosive thing. large, strong athletes on the planet in various forms are NFL football players.
And I'm not diminishing the AFL. There are obviously AFL athletes that are as good as our best athletes in the NFL, but I'm just saying by and large. And so I think you take that, then you couple it with the fact that that the whole United States map is represented basically in the 32 different teams.
Couple that with the fact that the rules of the sport are engineered where legitimately every team has reason for hope going into a season or going into, as we call it, any given Sunday. Literally, the Cleveland Browns could beat the reigning Super Bowl champs. The New York Jets could beat the number one team in the NFL at any given time.
And not to hate on the Browns or the Jets, I'm just picking teams that traditionally haven't been the strongest. I think you put all that together and then we love the physical nature of it, too. And I know the Aussies do as well. When you watch the AFL dudes with no pads on, some of those dudes didn't even have mouth guards in, I noticed. And they're crashing into each other like that.
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