When it comes to looking for more ways to infringe upon the ability of players to get the most out of their downtime, the NFL can be some sort of an instigator. A troublemaker.
The league’s latest instigation of trouble as it relates to the regular-season schedule comes from a potential cash grab on the night before Thanksgiving.
On the surface, it makes sense. It’s a quiet night. Plenty of people are at home, or at the home of the relatives with whom they’ll have an awkward feast the next day. Why not drop a football game into the mix and rack up an easy 30 million viewers?
But there’s a problem. When Christmas lands on a Wednesday, the NFL can have the December 25 teams play the prior Saturday. In November, Saturday isn’t an option, due to the calendar limits of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
As a result, and as reported by Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, teams emerging from byes would get the short-week short straw on the night before Thanksgiving.
That would essentially eliminate the full-blown bye experience for those teams, giving them a mini-bye on the front end and a mini-bye on the back end. (If the bookend games are played on Sundays, they’d actually have more time off after the Thanksgiving Eve game than before it.)
The powers-that-be won’t care. It’s another opportunity to peel one of the Sunday games from the pile and drop it into a standalone spot that will generate a larger audience, and a lot more money. It’s precisely the kind of game Netflix and/or YouTube would covet — an event. An extension of the Thanksgiving complement of games, which now has three on Thursday and one on Black Friday.
Whether the players on the teams that will have their annual two-week bye chopped in half (almost) like it or not, it’s another way to stuff more cheese into the pizza. And to cram more cash into the coffers of ownership.
Which means it’s going to happen.