Unlike toilet paper, when it comes to NFL games we crave quantity over quality
The NFL is expanding the playoff field, which means maybe the Dallas Cowboys will finally sneak back in.
What happened on Sunday morning in the NFL is the league agreed to saturate its own product for more money, and the majority of players felt they had no choice but to consent.
The collective bargaining negotiations between the NFL and the NFL Players Association came to an end on Sunday morning, with the players narrowly passing a 10-year deal.
Football players were, again, put in their place by the football owners. Not even the threat of the coronavirus was going to change that.
The NFL’s salary cap is now Jerry Proof; it’s $198 million for the 2020 season. If any GM puts his team into salary cap hell, he should be sent there immediately.
Know this, the players got popped, again, and had to say yes out of fear of the cash spigot turning off. Why they agreed to a 10-year contract that has no opt-out is an indictment on union chief DeMaurice Smith.
The players “wins” were the ability to smoke weed without fear, essentially a $100K raise for younger players, a couple of more spots on the active roster and practice squads, and commissioner Roger Goodell will no longer be permitted to play both Law and Order of the NFL.
You don’t care what a player gets, because your priority is watching football.
How does this deal affect you?
The only reason there would not be NFL games on in the fall on Sunday through 2030 is because the league folds, or a national emergency ... such as a lack of toilet paper—so long as it’s of the two-ply variety, y’know the good stuff.
The NFL is taking a greedy gamble that our thirst for quantity will compensate for quality. Adding a 17th game and expanding the playoff field to seven teams per conference jeopardizes what has become a fragile final month of the regular season, and all of January.
In this era of human tanks and human missiles going at each other for six months every year, players sustain a variety of injuries and are barely able to play 16 regular-season games as is. And now the NFL is adding another.
Back in September, I talked to former NFL player and NBC Sunday Night Football announcer Rodney Harrison about the idea of the league potentially going to a 17-game regular season.
“I would say it like this: I don’t know the numbers, but I am thinking between 60 and 70 percent of the league doesn’t even finish the season,” Harrison said. “Why do you want an extra 80 plays in the game when we can’t get 60 percent through the season?
“Guys are not taking contact in the preseason, or during the week, and a lot of these guys are still getting hurt.”
Harrison is thinking about player safety, and player availability.
What is the NFL’s 17th game going to look like if the quarterback is the backup’s backup, and three-fifths of the offensive line were guys plucked from practice squads?
By Week 10 of an NFL regular season, injury reports are often a Who’s Who of top names.
What the NFL has seen is that fans will still watch, provided the player is wearing the jersey of their favorite team, or the one they are betting on.
We’re addicted to the product. We have turned men such as Jerry Jones to Arthur Blank into drug dealers, and they are only too happy to play the part of Pablo Escobar or Walter White.
How the 17th game, which likely won’t be implemented until 2022, will “work” we won’t know for a while. That includes where the extra home game is played, and whether the NFL will add an additional bye week.
What the NFL player had said, repeatedly, was that it didn’t want an extra game. It also said it didn’t want Thursday games to be part of the schedule.
Their bodies could not take it.
For a little bit more cash, they just agreed to do it.
The NFL is gambling that you will happily consume the quantity over quality.
