Thoughts on a 17 game season

[Citizen]

The 16-game schedule has done fine for 43 years. An 18-game schedule would mean games full of backups, or between teams with nothing to play for, well into mid-January.

If the league has any interest in avoiding such a scenario, how about mandating that no player can be active for more than 16 games in a season? That way, the integrity of season records is intact and the risk of injury is no greater than before.

It also creates a new level of speculation and second-guessing for fans. When do we sit the starting QB? Do we bring on a backup kicker, or have a position player try it?

[racepug]

I agree about the greed, but I assume the players assn. has to sign on as well. I think owners/players will eventually agree to an 18-game sked on two conditions: the number of ex. games drops to two or maybe even one, and that there's an additional bye. From everybody's standpoint, including fans who hate ex. games, teams have been playing 20 games per season (ex. plus regular season) for years, so why not have as many as them as possible really count in the standings? More revenue and more interest all around.

At some point we're gonna be looking at a 40-team NFL and a 20-game regular season, with expanded playoffs. Might take another 30-40 years, and a lot of us on this board won't be around to see it, but I think ultimately that's where we're headed. And I assume some of those expansion teams will be in Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Sounds kind of wild, but just go back a couple generations to the mid-1950s, back when there was just 12 teams playing a 12-game regular season and a single postseason title game. Who could've realistically envisioned 32 teams playing a 16-game regular season followed by four rounds of playoffs? The pro sports universe just keeps expanding until one day it collapses in on itself. But it hasn't happened yet, so owners/TV/players are gonna keep pushing, pushing.

Well, you make some good points. It IS a racket, in my opinion, for N.F.L. teams to charge season ticket holders full price to pre-season games (which are little more than televised scrimmages, in my opinion), so as you stated: why not just make some of the games during the August-September time frame actually count? I guess my "beef" with abandoning the 16-game schedule is that doing so with 32 teams in the league has been "neat and binary." Schedules rotate through the league in a consistent manner under the current system which didn't always happen before 2002. My other question is: "Which teams would the N.F.L. add to each team's schedule to make for an 18-game season?" but that's for the N.F.L. to decide.

So my prediction for 2060 is: Mexico City beats Berlin in what is now the World Super Bowl. And the NFL (or is it now the World Football League?) has its first 8,000-yard passer that season. That's "only" 40 years from now---the same time span as 1960-2000, and look at how much everything changed on and off the field during that period. Or if you like, 1980-2020.

Oh, and the 2060 Lions still suck, becoming the first team to finish a season 0-20. They'll probably trade the #1 pick in the draft to acquire 84-year-old Tom Brady, who has just led the London Churchills to their 12th straight conference title.

[GameBeforeTheMoney]

What's interesting is the salary cap DECREASED while the number of games INCREASED. So the average player is probably going to make less per game. When Mahomes signed his contract I thought, "well, yeah, salaries will probably increase since the number of games is going to go up, so the agents will negotiate multi-year contracts based on that."

Maybe it's going to be for this year to make up for lost ticket sales for last. Regular season games are more valuable to owners in terms of television revenue. That's just a guess, however.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/310 ... -8-percent

[racepug]

Well, now it's official (as if there were ever any doubt that the owners would approve the move)!: https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-owners-for ... 04225.html

Here's one person's ranking of next season's "extra" games: https://sports.yahoo.com/17-game-season ... 12063.html

(I'm on record as having hoped for the "State Farm Bowl")

[Apbaball]

I think CTE has been driving them in the opposite direction - I don't think they would go back to the 1990s let alone the 1890s.

So much for caring of the long-term effects of CTE.

[JWL]

I think CTE has been driving them in the opposite direction - I don't think they would go back to the 1990s let alone the 1890s.

So much for caring of the long-term effects of CTE.

How many would you like?