NFL owners’ decision to ease ‘Thursday Night Football’ will have a negative impact on fans

Eagan, Minnesota. – O NFL He finally forced a flexible Thursday night schedule into his broadcast window. Let’s hope the league never has to use it.

On Monday, 24 franchises voted in favor of a scheduling mechanism that would allow the league to enter (or leave) Thursday Night Football games. Games are limited to weeks 13-17, decisions must be made 28 days before the game, there are a maximum of two Thursday night games that can be flexed out of five options, and of course, games must be guaranteed to be flexed.

These are strict conditions that always set a high standard for success. The league implicitly acknowledges that this could be a bad idea, referring to it as a “season-long test of modified scheduling policies for flexible scheduling associated with the Thursday Night Football package”.

The league really wanted to do this during the annual March meetings in Arizona. Later, teams in the league were required to give 15 days’ notice instead of 28. I said the room was evenly divided in the resolution before Giants co-owner John Mara stood up and called the idea a “illegal”.

He was, of course, right. I have yet to speak with an NFL player who would say publicly or privately that he loves playing Thursday Night Football. The NFLPA is certainly not in favor of this.

But beyond that, the NFL encouraged fans to buy tickets as soon as the highly curated lineup was released two weeks ago. Fans make their plans in advance, and a late-season primetime game is one that home or away fans want to secure.

Traveling costs money. Airfare is expensive. Hotel room prices go up when the city hosts an NFL game. This runs counter to the league’s ideal of the football family, suggesting that fans of any team playing five games could be affected and their plans could be futile in a few months.

“We are incredibly focused on our fans in the stadium and what our fans are watching on screens and televisions everywhere,” NFL Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Hans Schroeder said Monday.

“I don’t want to think that we’re not sensitive to that, we’re going to do everything we can in how we communicate, how clear and fast we can be. But we tried. On the other hand, we are balanced, we bring the right games to the right windows. This is what we will always be strongly directed towards. “

This is to ensure that every NFL game is a win. But I have maintained since the March meetings that unless Al Michaels complains as openly as he did about what he calls a bad fit, this flex is unlikely to be voted on.

Nobody wants a lemon in prime time, but it happens. And guess what? Everyone tune in next week anyway.

Between flexible play and flexible play, more than 100,000 fans influence their plans. This means that the four teams’ football operations team will have to reorganize. Both stadiums and host cities must now change their staffing programmes, be it concessions or a hotel or restaurant.

This is not the Sunday night flex we are used to. Sliding a game up or down on Sunday will inevitably have a negative impact on the entire process on the field from Sunday to Thursday.

But the decision that the league and owners made was that all those affected in those teams and cities were far fewer than the number of people watching on a screen somewhere. That number is what matters.

“Very, very important thing,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Monday when he mentioned the difficulty to fans. “All the owners in that room breathe sensitivity for these fans. But only 7% of our fans were inside the stadium. Seven percent. So you have a lot of fans – most of the fans are away – which is good for them.”

Games currently scheduled for Thursday nights in weeks 13-17 are:

It’s a beautiful slate that those responsible for NFL programming have gathered and gifted to all of us. Let’s just hope the NFL doesn’t steal it.