It looks like the NFL has mercifully ended the worst eight minutes in sports: the touchdown-commercial-kickoff-commercial combination.
Green Bay Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy spoke Monday at the team's annual shareholder meeting at Lambeau Field, and notified fans of the change.
"They're going to get rid of what they call a 'double-up,'" Murphy said. "So a 'double-up' is when you have a touchdown, and a commercial, then a kickoff and a commercial. I think you lose a lot of fans when you do that."
Murphy told the assembled shareholders that ending the 'double-up' is part of a larger initiative to cut down on what some see as bloated NFL telecasts.
"What the league is really also focusing on is the pace of the game, and trying to speed up our broadcasts. We're hopeful to reduce the average game length by about five minutes, and they're going to do that by looking at commercials," he said.
League commissioner Roger Goodell said in March that the NFL was working to reduce the number of commercial breaks.
"Together with our broadcast partners, we will be working to meaningfully reduce down time and the frequency of commercial breaks in our game," Goodell wrote in a statement.
"We will also be giving our broadcast partners increased flexibility to avoid untimely breaks in the action. For example, we know how annoying it is when we come back from a commercial break, kick off, and then cut to a commercial again. I hate that too. Our goal is to eliminate it."
And eliminate it, they have. The most exciting play in the game, a touchdown, will no longer be killed via the slow burn of insurance commercials.
Now that is a reason to do a touchdown dance.
