Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Fixing What's Not Broken

The NFL has toyed with the idea of expanding the regular season from 16 games to 17 or more.

Not only is it incredibly hard to stay healthy for 16 games (plus preseason and playoff games), the schedule is perfectly balanced with 32 teams playing 256 games; trust me, the mathematical symmetry here is as perfect as it gets. Adding another game or another team would ruin it.

Fortunately, Roger Goodell said Sunday it was "highly unlikely'' the schedule will be adjusted for 2009 to add more regular-season games while subtracting preseason games.

Thank goodness. If the NFL wants to expand the season without ruining the scheduling, try adding another bye week. Each team could have one bye week early and another bye week late, the season would run an extra week (18 weeks total) giving the league an extra weekend of games (i.e. advertising revenue). Go ahead and drop one of those silly preseason games. In fact, changing them to scrimmages (each team gets x number of plays or each team runs a two-minute drill) would be better for the team and more interesting to watch. The plan ought to appeal to the players, the advertisers, and the league (and it sure will help with fantasy football scheduling).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yep the NFL season is good the way it is. Now we need to get the NCAA on board with a playoff system. I believe with a legit playoff system, college football could pass the NFL as America's real pasttime. Unfortunately to get a playoff it would probably require an act of congress. Or maybe one vote by the senate and two different votes by the house (you know they got to redo their vote sometimes). -Justin D