I just read an article
about the National Football League expanding the Thursday night schedule on the
networks, CBS and NBC, to 10 games (up two), while continuing to hold on to the
other Thursday games on its NFL Network. As much as I love football, and you
know I do, I am not at all a fan of the Thursday night games. I think they’re
dangerous.
It’s bad enough, in my
eyes, that some of these guys have to play on Monday night and then be ready to
play again the following Sunday. For a team to play on Sunday, and then have to
play on Thursday is ridiculous, and most of all, dangerous. These men get all
kinds of knocked around, and they need those days to recover. If it takes them,
typically, five or six days to go from one game to the next, how could the league,
which claims to take players’ health and safety into account in all actions,
put them on a schedule that gives them three days between vocational beatings?
I read a thing a while
ago, about how much the players themselves dislike the Thursday night games.
That certainly made me more of an advocate for the discontinuation of that schedule.
(I also think the Pro Bowl should be canceled. Let these guys have their off
seasons off.) So, am I big, huge hypocrite for watching the Thursday night
games anyway? Sadly, and shamefully, yes. Yes, I am. I look forward to them and
enjoy them, as I do every football game.
And that’s the NFL’s
hook: it can make more money and collect the ad revenue for another full night
of television, because people will watch these games. This is why I’m advocating
for the removal of the Thursday night games entirely. Because my point is this,
if you take it away, we won’t watch it, or really, miss it too much, I daresay.
And the players can have a full schedule of football and recovery, football and
recovery. Those three-day work weeks are brutal on guys who need the time to
make themselves hale and hearty again.
But the NFL, as proven again and again, is a cash-only business, and it doesn’t care too much about the guys in the trenches.
But the NFL, as proven again and again, is a cash-only business, and it doesn’t care too much about the guys in the trenches.
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