Which teams would benefit from altered NFL schedule?
The NFL schedule is planning to play a full 16-game season without any host bubbles to shield the league from the ongoing pandemic.
For NFL schedule planners, that may prove to be challenging
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New NFL Schedule
As of right now, the NFL is planning to play a full 16-game season without any host bubbles to shield the league from the ongoing pandemic. (as evidenced by some of the struggles MLB has experienced already) and there’s always the chance that the NFL could change its plans between now and September, or even alter them on the fly.
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Our Jason La Canfora doesn’t seem all that optimistic that the NFL will be able to play things out as currently planned (can you blame him?) so this week he decided to dive into an interesting exercise based around a “what if” scenario: What if the NFL ultimately scraps out-of-conference games and alters the schedule so that teams only face in-conference foes?
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JLC explores that idea and which teams might benefit the most if it were to happen.
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While we’re discussing altered NFL schedules, it would be nice if the NFL could find a way to stretch games across multiple days of the week rather than stacking the slate on Sundays. If we’re not going to have college football and other sports are going to be in their offseason while the NFL is in-season, then why not have two or three games per day across several days of the week in order to maximize our entertainment options and the league’s advertising revenue?
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I have no idea if this idea would work logistically with spacing and rest between games and, if so, it would take a lot of creativitky from schedule-makers to pull off. But the idea of the NFL having a nightly “Monday Night Football”-esque schedule could be a lot of fun.
And there is this:
If the Power Five conferences decide to cancel college football this season, that decision could end up having some major ramifications on the NFL‘s schedule for 2020. The NFL has been eyeing the college situation closely and one reason for that is because the league is apparently planning to make some major changes to its schedule if there’s no college football. According to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, the NFL will “likely” add more Saturday games this year if there’s no college season. To make this happen, the NFL would move several games that were originally scheduled for Sunday and put them on Saturday. One thing that’s not clear is how many games would be scheduled for each Saturday and who would get to broadcast them, however, those are issues that could easily be hashed out before the start of the season if the Saturday games end up happening. NFL Schedule changes Basically, the cancellation of the college season means the NFL would likely be adding Saturday games in September, October and November. Although the NFL puts Saturday games on its schedule nearly every season, those are always played in late December due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. When that was passed nearly 60 years ago, Congress gave the NFL an antitrust exemption for its broadcasting rights under the condition that the league wouldn’t schedule games on Saturdays during the college football season or on Fridays during the high school football season. If both of those seasons are put on ice, that conceivably opens the door for the NFL to play on nearly any night it wants. |
