Now is the time in the football season when a lot of things start to happen. The playoff picture starts to get just a little bit more in focus, teams start planning out their best course of offseason action (Rams, Raiders, Chiefs, Lions), the wild card battle begins and changes with such frequency that nobody can possibly tell what will happen next, and the NFL starts scheduling games for Thursday night.
When did all of this begin? I mean, I know that we've had the traditional Thanksgiving day games for years and years. Dallas and Detroit have just always done it. But then the NFL network decided that it would be a great new idea to start broadcasting games on Thursday night. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's silly. I've never really minded the Thanksgiving game because it has always been tradition, and it's always been the only 2 games out of the year that have been on a Thursday. Now, the ultimate question, why does it matter? I'll tell you.
If you follow football a lot, then you know what the general practice schedule is for basically every single team in the NFL. Monday and Tuesday are off days, and practice happens Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, with any additional film study sessions or walk throughs to happen on Saturday, and game day is Sunday. That's just the schedule that teams follow. And they don't exactly break that schedule if they happen to know they are playing a game on Thursday. When my Broncos played the Browns last year on a Thursday, all the after game interviews had some comment about what a difficult preparation it is with 1 day of practice in a short week. That's all that they get! 1 day! I would argue that this takes the excitement out of the games because you can't possibly have a really good game plan, on either side, with just 1 day's worth of practice. Routines are thrown off, everybody is a bit more discombobulated, and you're just bound to have a bit more of a mess of a game. Take, for instance, just last night when Jay Cutler threw 5 interceptions in a 10-6 loss at San Fran. Now, forget the fact that I am completely tickeled at the fact that Cutler threw 5 interceptions, which I am; isn't it possible that a portion of that has to do with the lack of preparation time that they had for the game? I mean, I suppose it could be that the 49er defense was just that much better than the Bears offense, but I highly doubt it. Instead, maybe he only throws 3 interceptions because, let's face it, he is still Jay Cutler.
Next, I think that making regular Thursday games takes the special nature of the Thanksgiving day games away. I mean, yeah, it is still just a regular season game that will usually result in the Lions losing, just like the rest of the regular seaon (sorry Lions fans), but it's part of everybody's Thanksgiving tradition. While food is being prepared, wine is being drunk, and family is getting together, those Turkey Day football games are definitely on in the vast majority of American households. It's special for those teams, too, because they may be teams that don't generally get the attention of an entire national audience, like the Lions, and gives them a chance to play for the whole country. Now we also have to deal with this after Thanksgiving? I think more teams are dreading the Thursday games than looking forward to them more than anything now.
Now, I realize that this is a way for the NFL to try and generate more revenue by having another game on national television on another random night of the week; and, more than that, I realize that it is probably working for them pretty well. But come on! Is it really needed? It throws teams off, creates average games that aren't so fun to watch, and takes away from the 2 Thursday games that people actually care about. If I were in charge, which I know that I'm not but a guy can dream can't he!, then I would get rid of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment