NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell confirmed yesterday that talks have begun between the league and the players’ association about expanding the season from 17 games to 18. It’s all high-level, but this keeps rumbling around.
The expectation is that one preseason game will be removed, and there seems to be some support for increasing the number of bye weeks from one to two. Will this move the start of the NFL season up a week, to Labor Day Weekend? Will this move the Super Bowl back a week, to Daytona Day, or back two weeks, to the weekend after Daytona Day? These seem to be the questions. College football and NASCAR, buckle up, because the NFL is going after your Southeastern culture.
Personally, I’m obviously in favor of the move to 18 games, because final records with an odd number make me uneasy. I suspect this was always the NFL’s strategy. 16 games was so satisfying. 8–8? 12–4? Those are big, square, sturdy records. 12–5? I don’t even know how good that is. The NFL created an unstable situation in order to make it easier to one day topple it. They saw Russia’s foreign policy regarding the nation of Georgia, and they pounced at the chance to emulate it.
What I am not in favor of, and what every red-blooded American should oppose, is the expansion of the NFL calendar. Professional football on Labor Day, college football’s sacred weekend? A later start to NASCAR? Terrible developments. And those aren’t the worst part.
Football is supposed to be about toughness. It’s supposed to be manly. It’s supposed to be a physical game played by strong men who are undaunted in the face of pain.
And yet it is only played once a week.
This was an issue in the 16-game era, and it’s an issue in the 17-game era, and it was an issue in the 14-game era (although at that point, players at least had enough of a sense of duty to use steroids). The NFL is soft. Once a week?? This isn’t a rec center art class.
If the NFL has any balls, it’ll expand to 18 games without changing the calendar. Instead, once a year, every team will play one Wednesday Night game on top of their weekly matchups. They can still have the bye week, obviously. We’re not lunatics (although someone did accuse Joe yesterday of not caring about jet lag). But once a year, NFL players will be required to play two games in a week. If they don’t, the wussification of America will be complete.
Etc.
- Netflix is making a documentary about Connor Stalions, and I hope they changed their passwords. If Apple TV or Peacock surges, or if Blockbuster makes a comeback? We’ll know why.
- Aaron Rodgers showed up to training camp wearing a t-shirt featuring an Egyptian cat goddess, in case you didn’t hear how he spent his summer vacation.
- Joe Burrow buzzed and bleached his hair. This is an important step in a hot guy’s hot guy ascent. This is the moment the guy tests whether his hotness will now persist no matter what he looks like. Hotness is different for guys than it is for women. It’s more permanent. Guys have to look good to become hot, but once they’ve reached that status, it’s hard to lose the title. I would know.
- The NCAA announced this morning that the WBIT will also be back at Hinkle Fieldhouse this coming spring, with the semifinals again on Monday and the championship again on Wednesday. Huge news for people who like impressively fast court branding transformations, and also for women’s basketball. Noteworthy that Fox Sports hasn’t created a WBIT competitor yet. This is the worst sexism scandal in Fox Corporation history. (Fair warning: I’m going to use that line a lot these next eight and a half months.)
- In honor of Big Ten media day, Oregon floated a giant inflatable duck down the White River. The one in Indiana, to be clear. Although I do think it’d make sense if every Big Ten media day, the closest river to the proceedings was temporarily renamed the White River. It would make a lot of sense.
- I was reminded today that surfing is an Olympic sport, and I was further reminded that it’s happening in Tahiti this year. What makes this seamless is that the Olympics are in Paris and Tahiti’s part of French Polynesia. Bad news for colonialism’s haters!!
