Nobody loves the NFL more than the NFL itself. How better to explain what is now a three-week rollout of the 2022 schedule?
It’s already been more than a month since the league announced the schedule….for releasing the schedule. Both ESPN and the NFL Network sent out “breaking news alerts” through their apps that day: NFL announces dates schedules will be announced!! And that schedule was a convoluted three-week extravaganza where each week fans would be teased with a handful of “special” games before the rest of your team’s matchups would be announced tomorrow.
That first “special” game was the debut of Amazon Prime’s season slate: the Chargers vs the Chiefs on September 15th. That’s not the first game of the season–that’s the first Amazon Prime game of the season. Then came one of the three matchups on Christmas day and “select” other prime time matchups. Then came the European game announcements last week and more “breaking news alerts” from the networks. Now today, teams are “leaking” “select” home matchups (Dallas and Mike McCarthy–if he is still the coach in Big D at that time–are coming to Lambeau Sunday, November 13th for a 3:25 kickoff), and the app alerts are flying again.
This will finally culminate with the release of the “full schedule” tomorrow night. Both ESPN and NFL Network plan 3-hour live specials Thursday night to “break down” all of the matchups–in May. Our sister station, The Score is running special schedule release programming from Westwood One Sports as well. And by the end of the night, the “experts” will have predicted the outcomes of all 272 games, the records for all 32 teams, who is going to make the playoffs, and who is winning the Super Bowl–all before the first mini-camps are held.
It didn’t used to be like this. The NFL used to issue the entire schedule in one fell swoop sometime in April. You’d find out about it through the traditional media that day and pretty much forget about it until the gas station had the wallet-sized schedules on their counters around July. You’d take a cursory look at it, add up a few wins and losses, and if you were a Packers fan, expect another 7-9 season. But now, the NFL treats the release of its schedule like it’s Moses coming down from the Mount with the 10 Commandments.
And that, of course, is by design. For decades, you didn’t think about the NFL between the Super Bowl and the draft, and then not much between the draft and the start of training camp or even the pre-season. But now, the league needs to be in front of you all year round. February is now owned by the Super Bowl. March by the free-agent signing period and the combine. April by the draft. May by the schedule release and optional team activities (aka: off-season practice), June is mandatory mini-camps, July is the start of training camp and then you are back into the pre-season and games. The perfect 24-hour a day, 12-months out of the year, 365 day news and publicity cycle. It’s every public relations hack and advertisers’ dream.
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the NFL doesn’t do its release like Major League Baseball, which provides the next season’s schedule before the current season is even over. I’d hate for Matt LaFleur to be “distracted” by questions from the media about next year’s Week 16 matchup with Detroit before this year’s Week 16 matchup against Minnesota. Anyway, I need to wrap this up. Yahoo Fantasy Sports just posted an article on how the schedule release is affecting their draft rankings for placekickers.
