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Ugh 4 O'clock Dolphins Games

i live in Colorado, late games are ideal; 2pm kick off is perfect!
 
I hate 4:00 games. For the family man there’s dinner and tending to the kids before bed. I prefer 1 or late games.

I probably still have it pretty easy as my kids are getting older but still stupid dinner.
 
Miami has the Jets this week @4pm, Cardinals @4:25pm, Chargers @ 4pm, Broncos @4pm and mostly likely the Raiders game will be a late game too.

I understand the West Road games being late but why are the home games vs the Jets and Chargers late games?

Don't really care for late games because I hate waiting til mid evening to watch Dolphins football. Especially if the 1pm games are abysmal like it was last week. I took a nap and woke up with miami having 1st and goal vs SF early in the 1st qtr lol But I don't think I've ever recall Miami having 6 4pm games in a season.

Anyone actually prefer late games?

I couldn’t find it and missed the first niners 3 and out. Sunday ticket said it was blacked out but couldn’t find it on another channel. It was on local Fox but the guide said “Beat of Monday Night Raw” or something. Finally just put it on Fox to see and there it was.
 
I love the late games. It feels like Cream not Crowd. The Crowd teams are crammed into those 1 PM games and all the scores blend. Then the showcase games are 4 PM with less competition.

At least that's the way it used to be. The elite teams were always saved for the 4 PM showcase games. The trend was blatant in the late '60s when the AFL and NFL each had doubleheaders every week. The 1 PM games would always be filler like the Boston Patriots vs. the Dolphins on NBC, and the Redskins vs. Eagles on CBS, then all the big shots competed at 4 PM. You'd have some combination of the Packers and the Cowboys and the Rams and Colts on CBS NFL, while the NBC AFL was among the Jets and Chiefs and Raiders and Chargers, who were flashy with John Hall and Lance Alworth.

Awesome. It was a treat every week. There were no primetime games to steal away the Cream teams, so you saw them at 4PM every Sunday. My family would set two televisions side by side in the Florida room. Keep in mind this was prior to remote control. Actually my dad got remote control in 1970, just in time for the merger. We were first in the neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids and even some adults would come to our house to see the clicker and figure out how to use it.

Big stuff

Then early '70s the Miami area was incredibly frustrated when the Dolphins were relegated to the 1 PM games far too long, even after they had obviously surged under Shula. Once you reached 4 PM level that meant the supreme NBC announcing team of Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis. It was so amazing in those early '70s when the Dolphins finally were advanced to the 4 PM slotting and also the Monday Night showcase with Cosell, Meredith and Gifford. It felt like the entire country was watching. Then when it was an obscure 1 PM game against some Crap team it didn't feel the same. The Dolphins thankfully would use Csonka to grind out those games in methodical fashion and finish at 3:35 PM so there was still plenty of time to grab a snack or something prior to the 4 PM theater.

The only time I disliked the late games was when I lived in Las Vegas and was teaming with two other guys in a high stakes betting group. What a pain in the ass. Johnny Avello at Bally's would put up the early numbers for the following week's games at 3 PM Pacific, which meant it was still during the second half of those late games. I had to be there every week for years. So I'm watching the games and sweating out my wagers at the same time I've got to check out the new numbers and decide what to pounce on. Keep in mind we weren't wagering 50 bucks. I'd have to decide on whether or not to bet 10 dimes. If it was a good deal we wanted the maximum, which was 10 dimes. Then it's amusing as hell when I make those bets and go to the pay phone down the hall at Bally's to call my two buddies and tell them what I ended up with. They fully trusted me. That's why I was there. In all the years I only really made one mistake, where I grabbed a number for the limit that wasn't a great number. But often I'd josh with them, by reading out a supposed wager I made. I'd invent a terrible number on some game and tell them I got it. One of the two guys always knew I was kidding. So he'd laugh. But the other guy Dave was paranoid, so he's go absolutely nuts every time, screaming at me in a high pitched voice. Finally I convinced the sharp guy to restrain laughter so we'd both get to enjoy Dave's implosion.
 
Then early '70s the Miami area was incredibly frustrated when the Dolphins were relegated to the 1 PM games far too long, even after they had obviously surged under Shula. Once you reached 4 PM level that meant the supreme NBC announcing team of Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis. It was so amazing in those early '70s when the Dolphins finally were advanced to the 4 PM slotting and also the Monday Night showcase with Cosell, Meredith and Gifford. It felt like the entire country was watching. Then when it was an obscure 1 PM game against some Crap team it didn't feel the same. The Dolphins thankfully would use Csonka to grind out those games in methodical fashion and finish at 3:35 PM so there was still plenty of time to grab a snack or something prior to the 4 PM theater.

I was a tad too young to recall the early 70’s stuff. I grew up in NorCal and when I started watching at 6 years old, it was very much like you said — with MIA usually being a late game. Or on MNF.

Back then there was no push for every team to get at least 1 primetime game. MIA was always on MNF the maximum amount of times. As were the good teams of the era, such as DAL, MIN, OAK, PIT, HOU, SD, etc.

I grew up liking to listen to Dick Enberg & Merlin Olsen calling games, along with Don Criqui, Bob Trumpy, Charley Jones, and Bryant Gumble in the studio. And, of course, the MNF crew of Gifford, Cosell, and Dandy Don. I think Curt Gowdy was still doing some games in the late 70’s but I seem to remember him doing baseball more than anything else.

I grew up in Raiders territory, but fell in love with MIA first. The 49ers weren’t any good back then and were always blacked out locally because they didn’t sell enough tickets.

While I’m Dolphins through and through, I knew as much about the Raiders back then because their games often were played at the same time as MIA so that’s who we got locally on NBC. Stabler, Hendricks, Otto, Branch, Biletnikoff, Hayes, Van Eeghan, I knew them all.

But because of the time zone differences, and MNF I usually got to see MIA play 6-8 games per season. Sometimes more. But it sucked having to follow their games via in-game and halftime highlights.

I remember that halftime of MNF is often the only way you got to see highlights back then. You made the comment that it felt like the whole world was watching. Well, often, they were! I fully remember the Dolphins-Pats game in 1980 when they broke the new about John Lennon. That’s how most people heard about it. Very different times back then, as you fully know.

Circling back to the Sunday games, I also remember waiting for the late game to end so they could switch to another game that was still in progress. That’s another way I sometimes caught part of a Dolphins game if they weren’t televised in my area. One game that comes to mind was the 28-28 tie with the Jets.

Then came the early 90’s and satellite dishes. I spent several years sports bar hopping on Sunday’s hoping someone could pull in the Dolphins game that week. Then came DirecTV in 1994ish and rescued me from having to do that.
 
I prefer 1:00 but I do tend to get more done on days with 4:00 kickoffs. I enjoy the beer a bit more if I’m productive pre game.
 
Yeah, this isn’t right.

The only late game besides MIA/NY is GB/TB. All those other games are played early.
Yeah you’re right. I don’t think that map was updated correctly yet. Surely Green Bay/TB will be the game most people see late
 
i hate them cause normally i have family over for dinner at around 530-6 almost every sunday night. I'm smoking a pork shoulder this sunday and was thinking, game gets over at 4 thats when i can go into top gear on prepping everything, nope..ill miss most of first half, but at least it looks like ill get the game on the big screen instead of my laptop in charlotte area
 
I don't mind the 4 o'clock games when we are on the road, but not having that sun/heat advantage for the home 1 o'clock games takes away part of that home field advantage.
 
But there are generally fewer 4 PM games so I feel like they have a higher likelihood of being shown to more people
For me, that's absolutely true. When I use Sportsurge to stream the games, I have much better success with the 4pm games than the 1pm games because there's less server traffic. That's how I saw last week's game.
 
I don't mind the 4 o'clock games when we are on the road, but not having that sun/heat advantage for the home 1 o'clock games takes away part of that home field advantage.
I think at this time of year, the heat isn't as much as a factor as it was in September.
 
I think at this time of year, the heat isn't as much as a factor as it was in September.
Sunday it is supposed to be 85 degrees at 1pm. (Compare that with 64 degrees in NYC.)

With the sun setting by 6-7pm and the temperature dropping approx 5 or more degrees, this can be pretty significant. For anyone that has ever played or even ran outside in both temperature differences, you know what it can do.
 
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