After eight months of hype, speculation and anxiety leading into the NFL season, it is half over. There have been surprising highs, as well as predictable lows this year, but I have felt a tangible level of disappointment with the NFL as a whole this year.

People have been talking a lot, and rightly so, about how most of the stories in the NFL have taken place off the field.

Part of the reason this has happened is the two-headed monster of media/fans that insists on talking certain issues into the ground. Rather than focusing on the good that has taken place on the field, many choose to talk more and more about one player’s off-the-field issues or one team’s “love boat” fiasco than focus on what the players are famous for – playing football.

Another cause of the supposed lack of compelling stories is that the real stories are happening in small markets, which I believe both the NFL and the sports media not-so-secretly bemoan on what seems to be an hourly basis. Some of the best teams this season and, consequently, the best on-field stories, are coming from Seattle, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Indianapolis and Carolina.

Because these teams, which are mostly new and unsuccessful teams, are not blessed with huge legions of fans (both true and bandwagon) on a national level, they don’t enjoy the same coverage. It is sad, but you can bet the NFL would be doing even better than it is if there were great teams in Dallas, Miami or New York.

That said, I am willing to concede that the final NFL product might be slipping a little.

Almost half of the NFL teams are plagued by average or worse quarterbacks (the league’s bread-and-butter position), and although the media has attempted to slurp the likes of Eli Manning, Michael Vick and Jake Plummer as being all-world quarterbacks, they simply are not – and most football fans can see that.

This problem feeds into the other problem facing the league: running backs are running away with the MVP talk. If trends continue, and we have seen no sign to signify they won’t, LaDainian Tomlinson or Shaun Alexander will easily take home the MVP (and all the people who are talking about Jake Plummer for MVP, let us remember that if someone earns a lifetime achievement award for being unbearably inconsistent, they should be automatically stricken from MVP discussion).

Worse still, the conferences are still woefully unbalanced, with the NFC being more competitive within itself, but still unable to compete with the AFC powers (although having been an AFC guy who suffered through 1,000 straight NFC Super Bowl blowouts, I am mildly refreshed by the changing of the guard). It seems almost inevitable that the NFL will not have its two best teams playing in Detroit this January.

Is this a bad NFL season? I don’t think so. But if it goes down in history as such, look no further than the sports media for your reason why.

– Nathan Chiaravalloti is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Davenport.