Should the NFL expand to a 30 game season?
One of my favorite Twitter accounts is Nick Walker, @nw3, a private equity guy in the Midwest who has offbeat takes on otherwise ultra-mainstream topics like making money, football, and Taylor Swift.
I don’t know whether Nick has been to MBA school, but he reminds me of my reaction to my MBA education at UCLA in 1980-82: they sure teach you some crazy perspectives in B-school, although most MBAs don’t notice how weird the implications of what they are taught are. That’s probably why nobody ever seems to respond to Nick on X.com.
Lately, Nick raises the topic of: why does the NFL limit itself to the Autumn?
In contrast to the NFL’s 17 games (up from 12 games in the early 1960s) from the second week in September to early January, the English soccer Premier League runs for 38 games from August to May. This year, the Premier League regular season starts on September 1 and ends on May 10, 8 and 1/3rd months later. In contrast, the NFL regular season only lasts 18 weeks (17 games and a bye week.)
During World Cup years, the soccer season runs from August to July.
People (in other countries) love soccer.
Personally, I much prefer baseball to football, but in 2024, most Americans do not. Americans love American football, even if they are recently less likely to send their sons to play it. Eventually, the increasing gladiatorialization of American football might cause the NFL a problem, but that sure hasn’t happened yet.
So, what’s stopping the NFL from expanding from a regular season of 17 games to 30 games? Why not start the NFL season right after the NBA Finals in June?
That sounds horrible to me, but I’m a traditionalist, not a profit maximalist.
Well, the limits of the human body are one thing. Patrick Mahomes couldn’t play all 30 games (not to mention the playoffs).
On the other hand, baseball pitchers don’t play all their games either. Clayton Kershaw has never played in even 21% of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ regular season baseball games. In the five seasons of this decade, he’s never played in 17% of their games.
So, what if there were a rule that NFL players could only play in 17 of the 30 regular season games? Would that strike fans as bogus? Or would talk radio go nuts strategizing over which 17 games Mahomes should play in?
I could imagine this would lead to a lot of blowouts in which the opponents of the Chiefs respond to Mahomes starting the game on the first drive by pulling their starters and sending in their second stringers. Gamblers would be insanely interested by the first play: do the opponents respond to the Chiefs sending Mahomes out to play by resting their first team? Do they get their stars off the field in time?
Why can't Mahomes play in 30 games? It's not like it's any longer legal to hit the quarterback.
The NFL played on Labor Day weekend most recently in 2000, but they correctly determined that people weren't really paying attention yet after playing on the weekend for most of the 90s. In the northeast (and other parts of the country) children don't go back to school until the Wednesday or Thursday after Labor Day so that weekend fans are still on summer mode.
> So, what’s stopping the NFL from expanding from a regular season of 17 games (up from 12 in the 1960s) to 30 games?
Ironically the NFL only expanded to 14 games in the 1961 due to pressure from the AFL being founded in 1960. The AFL started with 8 teams so they played a double round robin of 14 games. The NFL had 12 teams but to beat the AFL to the punch in those markets they expanded into Dallas and Minnesota. If they didn't expand the schedule they wouldn't have been able to accommodate inter-divisional games.
To answer your question literally, the only ones stopping the NFL from expanding the schedule to 18 (never mind 30) is the NFLPA, the players union. The NFL cannot unilaterally expand the schedule.
> I could imagine this would lead to a lot of blowouts in which the opponents of the Chiefs respond to Mahomes starting the game on the first drive by pulling their starters and sending in their second stringers
I don't think this would happen because once a player played in a game, it would count against his limit. No takebacks. In baseball by rule the starting lineup isn't finalized until the manager hands his lineup card to the umpire, but as a practical matter the lineup is announced about 4 hours before the game.
> Gamblers would be insanely interested by the first play
I think what you are also missing is that this isn't the Jimmy the Greek era where the NFL pretended that no one was gambling on its games. Now the NFL is a partner of all of these legalized gambling sites. In New Jersey FanDuel has a betting parlor that isn't in the football stadium per se, but is located on the other side of the racetrack in the same complex. The point is that the gambling partners would insist that teams would have to announce who is playing in advance of the game, maybe 72 hours or so. Waiting for literal kickoff would lead to chaos and is ripe for a betting scandal, which would be anathema for the NFL.