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.
The failure of various non-NFL professional football leagues implies to me that people don’t love football sufficiently to want simply “more!”
Part of the NFL’s appeal I think is similar to what people used to do around water coolers the morning after a popular network show ran: everyone was watching the same thing at the same time and had an opinion on it, etc. If, instead of everyone focused on the same storylines featuring the same stars, you had a couple A-list versions and simultaneously a bunch of B-grade knockoffs and no one was ever sure week to week which would be which, you might gain some attention from the hardest of hardcore fans but lose quite a bit from the vastly more numerous casuals.
At a certain point, the NFL may end up killing the golden goose. I thought 16 games was perfect. Now between 17 games and the February Super Bowl you are now playing two or three regular season games after Christmas and the playoffs don't start until MLK weekend. To contrast, 40 years ago the Giants played a Wild Card game in Anaheim on December 23 with the Super Bowl (49ers/Dolphins @ Stanford) being on January 20. Under the current scheduling algorithm that Giants/Rams game would have been the weekend of January 12-14 with the Super Bowl occurring on February 10. This will be the calendar in 2030, barring any further changes to the scheduling algorithm.
The only time I can remember the NFL pulling back from a money-making scheme is when they instituted the double bye. Back then there were only 28 teams, so if you were giving 8 teams off in a particular week, there were only 10 games to go around. Reaction from the TV partners was so bad that it was scrapped after one season. Now, with 32 teams it might work and if they expand to 18 games they may do it to give the players an extra week off.
I want to add that once upon a time boxing was considered to be a more popular sport than football, basketball, and hockey. However they got greedy, first with closed-circuit broadcasting then at-home pay-per-view. Once upon a time you could watch Mike Tyson box on ABC's Wide World of Sports! That helped to develop new fans. Once you went off of free TV, you couldn't develop new fans. Once upon a time the heavyweight champion was one of the most famous people in the world; now, I couldn't even tell you who he is. It turns out it is Oleksandr Usyk of the Ukraine. I've never heard of the guy, never mind seen him box.
Did MMA contribute to the decline? Even back in the 1970s and 1980s, almost no one was actually a boxing fan. No one was watching the lower level professionals or going to their fights. It was the heavyweight championships and middleweight championships that were a big deal (in my memory anyway). People watched the heavyweights to see who the official badest-assed dude in the world was (middleweights for the toughest average sized guy?). With MMA we have learned the baddest ass dude in the world is not a boxer.
I don't understand this. Aren't all those guys middleweights? Are you saying no one watched them fight, or that they weren't average sized, or that's not why people watched their fights, or that they were badder assed than the heavyweight champs, or something else?
As a kid in the 80s and 90s it was basically impossible to get really interested in boxing. All the big fights were on Pay Per View and even if you found a way to watch them, usually didn't start until very late. Then when Tyson was dominate they were over very quickly, who wants to pay $49.95 (around $120 today) to watch a fight that lasted less than 3 minutes?
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.
I think you are correct about the players union objecting.
I suspect you wouldn't just be talking about needing a second-string but probably a third-string for a season almost twice as long as the current one. That would likely play havoc with salary caps and the like. It would also likely push the Super Bowl into the early part of the baseball season if you kept the current one game per week format, even if you eliminated the wild-card playoff games, which would move it out of the prime lull period when baseball hasn't started and the NHL and NBA are in the middle of their regular seasons.
I'd suggest almost the opposite, that baseball and basketball seasons are far too long relative to their championship series (the NFL keeps trending this way). IIRC almost half of the NBA teams make the playoffs even after a ridiculous number of regular season games, and baseball is almost as bad.
I vaguely remember someone suggesting a 20 or 21 week season which would have each team playing their divisional opponents home and away, and each other team in the league once, and standardize on three (IIRC) bye weeks for each team, instead of having some teams get three bye weeks and some only two. It might even allow for scheduling bye weeks, Thursday night, and Monday night games in such a way that it would avoid short weeks.
Baseball is actually the best with 12/30, but even so I think it's too much. Having 10 qualify with a one-game playoff to get to 8 worked well. The NHL used to be the worst at 16/21, but the one smart thing that Gary Bettman did as the league expanded to San Jose and beyond was that they didn't expand the playoffs; it is still 16 teams with all four rounds being 4/7, same as it has been since 1987.
> IIRC almost half of the NBA teams make the playoffs even after a ridiculous number of regular season games
You are being kind to the NBA as a full ⅔ of the teams now qualify for post-season play! In 2021 the Charlotte Hornets qualified with a record of 33-49, although they were one and done. The last time a team so lousy qualified for the post season was 1988 San Antonio Spurs (31-51); not coincidentally this was the last year of 16/23 teams qualifying for the playoffs as the NBA started to expand the following year.
Agree. Mahomes is not a good example here, Travis Kelce would be better. The Cowboys may start Ezekiel Elliott at running back this week. You want absurdity with a player going 30 games in a season, there you go.
I'm not a sports fan and only watch at family gatherings. I've always thought the NFL was better than the NBA (and much better than MLB- I take the position of Homer Simpson when he watched his first baseball game as a sober man).
Following the NBA is a huge investment of time, and time on weekdays too. To follow the NFL you can watch almost everything on Sunday, when, what else are you gonna do? And the season spans from the end of summer, through the fall, into the holidays when the weather is getting cold and awful. Then, just as it is about to wear out its welcome in January, your team is out of the playoffs and you can get back to life.
Instead of expanding into more weeks, what the NFL is doing is expanding into more time slots. Thursday night used to be a college football night but the NFL took it over. However, if the NFL moves into Saturday and really kills off college football, then the NFL will be killing off its future.
As it stands it is illegal for the NFL to move to Saturday (or Friday). Yes, they are playing a game this coming Friday, but that is being played in Brazil, so it is exempt from American law.
I found the law. It is actually illegal for the NFL to have games on both Fridays and Saturdays during a given week due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The act states that the NFL may not broadcast a game within 75 miles of a high school football or college football game taking place at the same time
My guess is that, if push came to shove, the NFL will say that a game that is being shown on Amazon Prime is not being broadcast at all, per se. Last year's Jets/Dolphins game on Black Friday was also on Amazon Prime.
That's actually a rather wise law that Congress passed in the 1960s (IIRC): Friday for high school football, Saturday for college, and Sunday for the pros. There's time enough in the weekend for everybody, and that kept the NFL from outcompeting the other levels of football.
I don't think the players' union would necessarily object under Steve's scenario of a 17-game limit per player, because roster sizes would have to double. No greater wear and tear on players and double the number of dues-paying members. I think this is a clever idea. The strategy of who to play in which games would be really intriguing. Would an above-average team play its "A" players all at the same time to be a favorite in 17 games, or stagger them to be competitive in all 30 games? Game theory probably has an optimization model that would answer this. (Assume a normal distribution of player talent with either random allocation of talent on teams or some index of overall team quality 1-32, some model for performance degradation and recovery week to week, and a random schedule. Use win-probability-added or some similar statistic to determine the optimal strategies.)
Though it would be aesthetically un-pleasing to see three-digit uniform numbers.
Do any of the college divisions have a weight limit? A ~180 lb limit could be a more interesting game (more running) that would attract more players. Don't know if it would placate their mothers afraid of brain damage.
The biggest problem with the NFL is too much time between plays drags out the game. Of course, they need those advertising minutes.
> Do any of the college divisions have a weight limit?
There is something called Sprint Football with a weight limit of 178 pounds but the fact that you had to ask about its existence is prima facie evidence that no one cares about it.
> The biggest problem with the NFL is too much time between plays drags out the game.
I disagree; in the normal course of events the amount of time between plays is perfect. Sometimes things get dragged out because of an injury or a replay challenge or excessive penalties, but those are the exception, not the rule.
The NFL doesn't care what the players think at all. Eagles CB Darius Slay is objecting to having to play a game in Sao Paulo, Brazil because of the crime rate. Multiple players have confirmed they were told not to leave their hotel rooms. This article says the Eagles are only going to be in Brazil for 48 hours. Requiring teams to make a trip like this for a regular season game is really foolish but the NFL owners have proven they are insanely greedy. Nothing they do would surprise me.
I have never had much interest in either kind of football, but became a fan of baseball during the College World Series. The games are capped at an hour and are FAST. Far cry from the somnambulace of MLB.
I’d rather the nfl double the amount of teams and perhaps add relegation. That would be insanely more interesting, and wards off the welcome wearer and irrelevance that is sure to come with expanded seasons.
It will be interesting to see the reaction to Flag Football at the 2028 Olympics, especially if they can get some NFL QBs, WRs, and DBs to do it.
There was a Saturday this summer where ESPN had youth flag football on TV, my takeaway was that it was pretty watchable, especially if you're the sort of fan who currently tunes in hoping to watch the QBs throw for a lot of yards (I consider myself decidedly in that camp).
Flag football has some advantages over the current version, 1 advantage is that you could play significantly more games.
An NBA like 82 game like season ... you lose some of the event like nature of current football, but the health of the athletes don't make it an impossibility.
The failure of various non-NFL professional football leagues implies to me that people don’t love football sufficiently to want simply “more!”
Part of the NFL’s appeal I think is similar to what people used to do around water coolers the morning after a popular network show ran: everyone was watching the same thing at the same time and had an opinion on it, etc. If, instead of everyone focused on the same storylines featuring the same stars, you had a couple A-list versions and simultaneously a bunch of B-grade knockoffs and no one was ever sure week to week which would be which, you might gain some attention from the hardest of hardcore fans but lose quite a bit from the vastly more numerous casuals.
At a certain point, the NFL may end up killing the golden goose. I thought 16 games was perfect. Now between 17 games and the February Super Bowl you are now playing two or three regular season games after Christmas and the playoffs don't start until MLK weekend. To contrast, 40 years ago the Giants played a Wild Card game in Anaheim on December 23 with the Super Bowl (49ers/Dolphins @ Stanford) being on January 20. Under the current scheduling algorithm that Giants/Rams game would have been the weekend of January 12-14 with the Super Bowl occurring on February 10. This will be the calendar in 2030, barring any further changes to the scheduling algorithm.
The only time I can remember the NFL pulling back from a money-making scheme is when they instituted the double bye. Back then there were only 28 teams, so if you were giving 8 teams off in a particular week, there were only 10 games to go around. Reaction from the TV partners was so bad that it was scrapped after one season. Now, with 32 teams it might work and if they expand to 18 games they may do it to give the players an extra week off.
I want to add that once upon a time boxing was considered to be a more popular sport than football, basketball, and hockey. However they got greedy, first with closed-circuit broadcasting then at-home pay-per-view. Once upon a time you could watch Mike Tyson box on ABC's Wide World of Sports! That helped to develop new fans. Once you went off of free TV, you couldn't develop new fans. Once upon a time the heavyweight champion was one of the most famous people in the world; now, I couldn't even tell you who he is. It turns out it is Oleksandr Usyk of the Ukraine. I've never heard of the guy, never mind seen him box.
Did MMA contribute to the decline? Even back in the 1970s and 1980s, almost no one was actually a boxing fan. No one was watching the lower level professionals or going to their fights. It was the heavyweight championships and middleweight championships that were a big deal (in my memory anyway). People watched the heavyweights to see who the official badest-assed dude in the world was (middleweights for the toughest average sized guy?). With MMA we have learned the baddest ass dude in the world is not a boxer.
Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Durán, and Thomas Hearns would disagree with one's claim
I don't understand this. Aren't all those guys middleweights? Are you saying no one watched them fight, or that they weren't average sized, or that's not why people watched their fights, or that they were badder assed than the heavyweight champs, or something else?
As a kid in the 80s and 90s it was basically impossible to get really interested in boxing. All the big fights were on Pay Per View and even if you found a way to watch them, usually didn't start until very late. Then when Tyson was dominate they were over very quickly, who wants to pay $49.95 (around $120 today) to watch a fight that lasted less than 3 minutes?
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.
I think you are correct about the players union objecting.
I suspect you wouldn't just be talking about needing a second-string but probably a third-string for a season almost twice as long as the current one. That would likely play havoc with salary caps and the like. It would also likely push the Super Bowl into the early part of the baseball season if you kept the current one game per week format, even if you eliminated the wild-card playoff games, which would move it out of the prime lull period when baseball hasn't started and the NHL and NBA are in the middle of their regular seasons.
I'd suggest almost the opposite, that baseball and basketball seasons are far too long relative to their championship series (the NFL keeps trending this way). IIRC almost half of the NBA teams make the playoffs even after a ridiculous number of regular season games, and baseball is almost as bad.
I vaguely remember someone suggesting a 20 or 21 week season which would have each team playing their divisional opponents home and away, and each other team in the league once, and standardize on three (IIRC) bye weeks for each team, instead of having some teams get three bye weeks and some only two. It might even allow for scheduling bye weeks, Thursday night, and Monday night games in such a way that it would avoid short weeks.
Baseball is actually the best with 12/30, but even so I think it's too much. Having 10 qualify with a one-game playoff to get to 8 worked well. The NHL used to be the worst at 16/21, but the one smart thing that Gary Bettman did as the league expanded to San Jose and beyond was that they didn't expand the playoffs; it is still 16 teams with all four rounds being 4/7, same as it has been since 1987.
> IIRC almost half of the NBA teams make the playoffs even after a ridiculous number of regular season games
You are being kind to the NBA as a full ⅔ of the teams now qualify for post-season play! In 2021 the Charlotte Hornets qualified with a record of 33-49, although they were one and done. The last time a team so lousy qualified for the post season was 1988 San Antonio Spurs (31-51); not coincidentally this was the last year of 16/23 teams qualifying for the playoffs as the NBA started to expand the following year.
Why can't Mahomes play in 30 games? It's not like it's any longer legal to hit the quarterback.
Agree. Mahomes is not a good example here, Travis Kelce would be better. The Cowboys may start Ezekiel Elliott at running back this week. You want absurdity with a player going 30 games in a season, there you go.
I loathe the 17th game. 12-5, is asymmetrical and looks ugly on the stat sheet.
Ugly on the stat sheet, but (slightly) fewer arguments about who goes to the play-offs.
Yes, and nobody can go .500 any more, the essence of mediocrity (I know there's a slight chance of a tie game)!
It could happen in the case of a tie.
Yes, Stefan said that. Please read the entire comment
I'm not a sports fan and only watch at family gatherings. I've always thought the NFL was better than the NBA (and much better than MLB- I take the position of Homer Simpson when he watched his first baseball game as a sober man).
Following the NBA is a huge investment of time, and time on weekdays too. To follow the NFL you can watch almost everything on Sunday, when, what else are you gonna do? And the season spans from the end of summer, through the fall, into the holidays when the weather is getting cold and awful. Then, just as it is about to wear out its welcome in January, your team is out of the playoffs and you can get back to life.
A 30 game season would be a boon for Tau Proteins
Instead of expanding into more weeks, what the NFL is doing is expanding into more time slots. Thursday night used to be a college football night but the NFL took it over. However, if the NFL moves into Saturday and really kills off college football, then the NFL will be killing off its future.
As it stands it is illegal for the NFL to move to Saturday (or Friday). Yes, they are playing a game this coming Friday, but that is being played in Brazil, so it is exempt from American law.
I found the law. It is actually illegal for the NFL to have games on both Fridays and Saturdays during a given week due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The act states that the NFL may not broadcast a game within 75 miles of a high school football or college football game taking place at the same time
My guess is that, if push came to shove, the NFL will say that a game that is being shown on Amazon Prime is not being broadcast at all, per se. Last year's Jets/Dolphins game on Black Friday was also on Amazon Prime.
That's actually a rather wise law that Congress passed in the 1960s (IIRC): Friday for high school football, Saturday for college, and Sunday for the pros. There's time enough in the weekend for everybody, and that kept the NFL from outcompeting the other levels of football.
As the joke in the movie Concussion made: The NFL owns a day of the week. The same day the Church used to own. Now it's theirs.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3322364/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu
I don't think the players' union would necessarily object under Steve's scenario of a 17-game limit per player, because roster sizes would have to double. No greater wear and tear on players and double the number of dues-paying members. I think this is a clever idea. The strategy of who to play in which games would be really intriguing. Would an above-average team play its "A" players all at the same time to be a favorite in 17 games, or stagger them to be competitive in all 30 games? Game theory probably has an optimization model that would answer this. (Assume a normal distribution of player talent with either random allocation of talent on teams or some index of overall team quality 1-32, some model for performance degradation and recovery week to week, and a random schedule. Use win-probability-added or some similar statistic to determine the optimal strategies.)
Though it would be aesthetically un-pleasing to see three-digit uniform numbers.
> Though it would be aesthetically un-pleasing to see three-digit uniform numbers
LOL this can be solved with the use of hexadecimal
Stop rewarding multi-millionaires who hate you.
There are far better things to do with your time & money.
> There are far better things to do with your time & money
Such as?
You really need to ask?
Sadly, you do.
Do any of the college divisions have a weight limit? A ~180 lb limit could be a more interesting game (more running) that would attract more players. Don't know if it would placate their mothers afraid of brain damage.
The biggest problem with the NFL is too much time between plays drags out the game. Of course, they need those advertising minutes.
> Do any of the college divisions have a weight limit?
There is something called Sprint Football with a weight limit of 178 pounds but the fact that you had to ask about its existence is prima facie evidence that no one cares about it.
> The biggest problem with the NFL is too much time between plays drags out the game.
I disagree; in the normal course of events the amount of time between plays is perfect. Sometimes things get dragged out because of an injury or a replay challenge or excessive penalties, but those are the exception, not the rule.
I didn't know you were a baseball guy, Steve. Favorite team? Favorite player? Favorite baseball memory?
The NFL doesn't care what the players think at all. Eagles CB Darius Slay is objecting to having to play a game in Sao Paulo, Brazil because of the crime rate. Multiple players have confirmed they were told not to leave their hotel rooms. This article says the Eagles are only going to be in Brazil for 48 hours. Requiring teams to make a trip like this for a regular season game is really foolish but the NFL owners have proven they are insanely greedy. Nothing they do would surprise me.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/eagles-star-doesnt-want-to-go-to-brazil-for-nfl-opener-i-told-my-family-not-to-come-down-here/
I have never had much interest in either kind of football, but became a fan of baseball during the College World Series. The games are capped at an hour and are FAST. Far cry from the somnambulace of MLB.
Speaking of profit maximization:
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41013650/nfl-owners-approve-private-equity-investment
I’d rather the nfl double the amount of teams and perhaps add relegation. That would be insanely more interesting, and wards off the welcome wearer and irrelevance that is sure to come with expanded seasons.
It will be interesting to see the reaction to Flag Football at the 2028 Olympics, especially if they can get some NFL QBs, WRs, and DBs to do it.
There was a Saturday this summer where ESPN had youth flag football on TV, my takeaway was that it was pretty watchable, especially if you're the sort of fan who currently tunes in hoping to watch the QBs throw for a lot of yards (I consider myself decidedly in that camp).
Flag football has some advantages over the current version, 1 advantage is that you could play significantly more games.
An NBA like 82 game like season ... you lose some of the event like nature of current football, but the health of the athletes don't make it an impossibility.