This past Thursday, the NFL released their schedule for the 2020 season. Much like this past NFL Draft, it was met with great enthusiasm and a much needed distraction from the day to day, doom and gloom of living in a quarantined world. Again, that’s the beauty of sport it could provide for us a different world to dive into, to get away from, or at the very least a distraction from every day’s peril.
Here’s the problem: While it was nice to be able to get excited for the up and coming season, figure the night game’s your team has, and how many times your team has to travel across the country (sorry San Francisco, but who did you piss off?). However there is one thing the NFL schedule did not provide us.
While September is still months away, we are still many more months away from having a vaccine or any type of treatment for this terrible sickness. So how is having a normal NFL season going to be possible with our present conditions?
The reality is it's not. Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and virtually every other sport around the world that was in season while this whole thing started had suspended their season and are still trying to figure out the best way to come back. NBA teams are practicing for the first time since March, Major League Baseball is pitching their plan to the players union this week for approval (hoping to have a start date by July 1st) and sports like tennis and MMA are already beginning to put together some sort of seasons. But every plan in every sport has accommodations and major changes to recreate their sport in a COVID world. So why hasn’t the NFL? If the plan is to wait and hope that we will have some sort of medical breakthrough between now and August, that’s one way of going about it.
But call me debbie downer, how about the NFL putting a plan together, you know, just in case we are still going through this in the fall?
But call me debbie downer, how about the NFL putting a plan together, you know, just in case we are still going through this in the fall?
So let’s skip over all of the political minutiae and say the NFL did put together a plan, what could it look like?
One of the proposed plans by baseball includes doing away with traditional AL and NL format along with the divisions and creating a new league that focuses on geography to reduce travel restrictions. They are also contemplating having 2-4 different locals to host all of the games, including playoffs and title games as well. And of course, no fans. The idea being, less travel, less interactions, thus socially distant sporting events. So if the NFL did something similar they would have to follow the following guidelines:
1) No more traditional conferences or divisions: Again this would just be in a quarantine state. But the NFL would have to make new divisions, or what I will them, leagues, based on geography to limit travel. There would four different divisions, at four different locales.
League 1: The East (Orlando)
League 1: The East (Orlando)
League 2: The South (Dallas)
League 3: The North (Chicago)
League 3: The North (Chicago)
League 4: The West (Las Vegas)
Each league would have eight teams, and each team would play only teams in their league, twice. That way there is no traveling across the country, and all players and personnel would be confined to one locale to minimize exposure.
2) New Playoff Format: So instead of trying to figure a playoff system which includes the parameters of a normal NFL season, such as divisional record, conference record, etc. Because teams would only play teams in their league, the top two teams in each league would advance to the playoffs. That would create an 8-team playoff, matchups being determined much like they do, now just hear me out, in the UEFA league. Winners of each league would be the one seed, and the runner’s up would be the two seeds. Then, at random, one seeds and two seeds will be picked to play one another for the first round matchup.
3) Saturday/Sunday Games + Thursday, Friday & Monday Night Football: There is an increasing chance that the College Football season will not happen due to many colleges around the country not permitting students to arrive in the fall for the beginning of the fall 2020 schedule. The NFL would be wise to make the entire weekend revolve around their sport, and to spread out the games amongst the current NFL viewing networks (ESPN, CBS, FOX, and NBC) and also open it up to streaming networks as well (Netflix, Apple TV, Youtube, etc.) Bottom line, make every game viewable, no more blackout restrictions, and the ability to watch every game in full, with few conflicts. If the NFL was able to utilize this schedule you would be able to see the following:
Thursday Night Football: 1 Game: 8 pm EST
Thursday Night Football: 1 Game: 8 pm EST
Friday Night Football: 1 Game: 7 pm EST
1 Game: 10 pm EST
Saturday: 2 Game: 12 pm EST
2 Games: 4 pm EST
2 Games: 7 pm EST
1 Game: 10 pm EST
Sunday: 2 Games: 12 pm EST
2 Games: 4 pm EST
Sunday Night Football: 1 Game: 8 pm EST
Sunday Night Football: 1 Game: 8 pm EST
Monday Night Football: 1 Game: 8 pm EST
*Bye Weeks would limit games between 12pm-4pm games
*Bye Weeks would limit games between 12pm-4pm games
League 1: The East
League 2: The South
League 3: The North
League 4: The West
What Works
Well for starters we would have football in a very practical sense. With the travel, players and personnel would be safer and that is what's most important. But there are some really interesting storylines that are easily developed by focusing teams in a more geographic sense. For starters the rivalries are all preserved, rivalries help drive the sport and some additional rivalries are more naturally created. For example, Jets/Giants game now have a great impact, the battle of LA become more significant and have you seen the North? Sign me up for all of those matchups!
What Does Not Work
While creating a league according to geographic proximity sounds great, it does have its flaws. After all, one of the divisions is called 'The South', that takes place in Dallas, which would take place at Jerry Jones's football complexes and Jerry's World-Cowboys Stadium, and in my plan, the Cowboys wouldn't even play there. But the pervious NFL divisional setup had its flaws as well. How are the Cowboys an NFC 'East' team? Same could be said about Indianapolis being an AFC 'South' team. So while this is obvious flaw in this pretend league, its not something we haven't already previously accepted.
But the true problem of this make believe league, and the problem the NFL is going to face whenever they decide that they will need to create their own plan, is how are they truly going to protect players and personnel, with no vaccine or medical treatment for COVID-19?
The return of football would do wonders for raising the morale of this nation in the midst of everything that is going on. Sports has the power to do so, and no sport, more than football, can have a greater impact on our morale. What could be a better way to deal with our pent-up energy from months of being in isolation, or our frustration with political officials, and the want and desire to sometimes just want to blow your top about how the world took a complete 180 with little to no warning and we are all the one's paying the price for it! Well here is one way...
Football can do wonders, can't it?
But we want everyone to be safe before they start trying to murder one another on passes over the middle. It makes sense.
So while we wait, allow us to speculate on what could be this fall. Let's continue to hope and pray that the end is coming near in our isolation and we will be able to gather, whether it is in small groups, or really small groups, to cheer on our teams once again. Because no matter if you are a democrat or a republican, I think one thing we can all agree on...
Is we need something to cheer about.
What Does Not Work
While creating a league according to geographic proximity sounds great, it does have its flaws. After all, one of the divisions is called 'The South', that takes place in Dallas, which would take place at Jerry Jones's football complexes and Jerry's World-Cowboys Stadium, and in my plan, the Cowboys wouldn't even play there. But the pervious NFL divisional setup had its flaws as well. How are the Cowboys an NFC 'East' team? Same could be said about Indianapolis being an AFC 'South' team. So while this is obvious flaw in this pretend league, its not something we haven't already previously accepted.
But the true problem of this make believe league, and the problem the NFL is going to face whenever they decide that they will need to create their own plan, is how are they truly going to protect players and personnel, with no vaccine or medical treatment for COVID-19?
The return of football would do wonders for raising the morale of this nation in the midst of everything that is going on. Sports has the power to do so, and no sport, more than football, can have a greater impact on our morale. What could be a better way to deal with our pent-up energy from months of being in isolation, or our frustration with political officials, and the want and desire to sometimes just want to blow your top about how the world took a complete 180 with little to no warning and we are all the one's paying the price for it! Well here is one way...
Football can do wonders, can't it?
But we want everyone to be safe before they start trying to murder one another on passes over the middle. It makes sense.
So while we wait, allow us to speculate on what could be this fall. Let's continue to hope and pray that the end is coming near in our isolation and we will be able to gather, whether it is in small groups, or really small groups, to cheer on our teams once again. Because no matter if you are a democrat or a republican, I think one thing we can all agree on...
Is we need something to cheer about.
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