2006 NFL Schedule Highlights Not So High
Barry F. Hess
March 28, 2006
The NFL announced highlights of the 2006 schedule yesterday.
The Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers will kick off the season in primetime, the Manning brothers will go head-to-head in the first Sunday night game, the new home of Monday Night Football, ESPN, will host a Week One double header and Thanksgiving Day will see a third game played.
Thursday September 7 the Steelers will begin defense of their title when they take on the up and coming Miami Dolphins and their new quarterback Daunte Culpepper.
Highlights of the rest of the Week One schedule to continue Sunday September 10 include Terrell Owens and the Dallas Cowboys taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars at 4:15.
The first Sunday night game of the season on NBC will put Peyton Manning?s Colts against Eli Manning?s Giants while ESPN kicks off Monday Night Football with a double header including the Redskins hosting Minnesota followed by San Diego traveling to Oakland.
But the fun doesn?t end there, no sir.
Thanksgiving Day, which traditionally has seen both the Cowboys and Lions host a game, will now see a third contest, Kansas City hosting Denver with a start time of 8 p.m. eastern time.
Having explained the maze of networks and time zones may I ask: Am I the only one that thinks this is completely ridiculous?
Just a few short weeks after NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue successfully negotiated a new contract with the NFL Players Association the 2006 schedule highlights are announced and his legacy may forever be tarnished.
Why, you might ask?
This may very well set a precedent in the NFL that will only continue to get out of hand and 20 years from now when we are scratching our heads and wondering how the great NFL fell so far from grace, you know kind of what you used to do with Major League Baseball for about 10 years before steroids and homeruns made us forget about that.
Part of the lure of the NFL is the fact that you can only watch the games on Sunday afternoon and once on Monday night.
Now we have such an over abundance to choose from there is nothing that separates the NFL from any of the other professional leagues that offer anywhere from 10 to 16 games every night, nothing to make it special.
Since the league started opening the season with a special Thursday night game four years ago the rest of the schedule stayed the same for the most part.
But with announcements like a double header on Monday night, the latter game between San Diego and Oakland isn?t even scheduled to begin until 10 p.m. eastern time, the NFL is single-handedly removing their largest audience from their product.
What the NFL hasn?t thought of, at least not now, is the fact that they still have to schedule games on Sunday afternoon people want to watch.
Sure Manning versus Manning is going to get great ratings but what about the other 15 weeks of the season and all the other great Sunday afternoon match-ups we?ve grown so accustomed to watching in the past?
The NFL is almost telling its fans not to tune of Sunday afternoon, those games aren?t that important.
The big games, the really alluring games, watch those on Sunday and Monday night?the rest don?t matter.
With a marketing plan like that it won?t take long for the NFL to become just as bad as Major League Baseball and that other league that used to promote professional basketball?I think they still call it the NBA.
Having said that there are two people, or two entities I should say, that are more overjoyed about this new deal than Stevie Wonder.
The hundreds of thousands of gamblers n America and the television networks that make all this possible.
Situations like a Monday Night Football double-header has to be a vision right out of a gambler?s paradise.
Traditionally known as the last possible out to break even from Sunday?s losses, gamblers will now have a second chance to dig themselves out of the Week One hole they dug for themselves.
But the real culprits of all this, the real bad guys are the television networks.
Four different networks, NBC, FOX, ESPN and NFL Network, will televise games this year.
Which, in turn, means the NFL is receiving huge amounts of money from four different networks to produce its product.
As long as that money continues to flow the NFL will continue to gratify those networks and cheat the fans.
The bottom line, as always, is money. And while I don?t fault the NFL for doing what it has to do to make a profit, after all it is a business, I have to believe no amount of television network money can put fans in the seats for a product they don?t have any interest of seeing.
The NFL has been the most popular professional league in America for quite some time but decisions like this are the first step to becoming just like MLB and the NBA.
Mediocrity has become a part of sports over the last several years but the NFL managed to counter that with what they call parity.
Well I have bad news for all you NFL fans out there, the gig is up and pretty soon parity and mediocrity will just be one in the same.
The Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers will kick off the season in primetime, the Manning brothers will go head-to-head in the first Sunday night game, the new home of Monday Night Football, ESPN, will host a Week One double header and Thanksgiving Day will see a third game played.
Thursday September 7 the Steelers will begin defense of their title when they take on the up and coming Miami Dolphins and their new quarterback Daunte Culpepper.
Highlights of the rest of the Week One schedule to continue Sunday September 10 include Terrell Owens and the Dallas Cowboys taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars at 4:15.
The first Sunday night game of the season on NBC will put Peyton Manning?s Colts against Eli Manning?s Giants while ESPN kicks off Monday Night Football with a double header including the Redskins hosting Minnesota followed by San Diego traveling to Oakland.
But the fun doesn?t end there, no sir.
Thanksgiving Day, which traditionally has seen both the Cowboys and Lions host a game, will now see a third contest, Kansas City hosting Denver with a start time of 8 p.m. eastern time.
Having explained the maze of networks and time zones may I ask: Am I the only one that thinks this is completely ridiculous?
Just a few short weeks after NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue successfully negotiated a new contract with the NFL Players Association the 2006 schedule highlights are announced and his legacy may forever be tarnished.
Why, you might ask?
This may very well set a precedent in the NFL that will only continue to get out of hand and 20 years from now when we are scratching our heads and wondering how the great NFL fell so far from grace, you know kind of what you used to do with Major League Baseball for about 10 years before steroids and homeruns made us forget about that.
Part of the lure of the NFL is the fact that you can only watch the games on Sunday afternoon and once on Monday night.
Now we have such an over abundance to choose from there is nothing that separates the NFL from any of the other professional leagues that offer anywhere from 10 to 16 games every night, nothing to make it special.
Since the league started opening the season with a special Thursday night game four years ago the rest of the schedule stayed the same for the most part.
But with announcements like a double header on Monday night, the latter game between San Diego and Oakland isn?t even scheduled to begin until 10 p.m. eastern time, the NFL is single-handedly removing their largest audience from their product.
What the NFL hasn?t thought of, at least not now, is the fact that they still have to schedule games on Sunday afternoon people want to watch.
Sure Manning versus Manning is going to get great ratings but what about the other 15 weeks of the season and all the other great Sunday afternoon match-ups we?ve grown so accustomed to watching in the past?
The NFL is almost telling its fans not to tune of Sunday afternoon, those games aren?t that important.
The big games, the really alluring games, watch those on Sunday and Monday night?the rest don?t matter.
With a marketing plan like that it won?t take long for the NFL to become just as bad as Major League Baseball and that other league that used to promote professional basketball?I think they still call it the NBA.
Having said that there are two people, or two entities I should say, that are more overjoyed about this new deal than Stevie Wonder.
The hundreds of thousands of gamblers n America and the television networks that make all this possible.
Situations like a Monday Night Football double-header has to be a vision right out of a gambler?s paradise.
Traditionally known as the last possible out to break even from Sunday?s losses, gamblers will now have a second chance to dig themselves out of the Week One hole they dug for themselves.
But the real culprits of all this, the real bad guys are the television networks.
Four different networks, NBC, FOX, ESPN and NFL Network, will televise games this year.
Which, in turn, means the NFL is receiving huge amounts of money from four different networks to produce its product.
As long as that money continues to flow the NFL will continue to gratify those networks and cheat the fans.
The bottom line, as always, is money. And while I don?t fault the NFL for doing what it has to do to make a profit, after all it is a business, I have to believe no amount of television network money can put fans in the seats for a product they don?t have any interest of seeing.
The NFL has been the most popular professional league in America for quite some time but decisions like this are the first step to becoming just like MLB and the NBA.
Mediocrity has become a part of sports over the last several years but the NFL managed to counter that with what they call parity.
Well I have bad news for all you NFL fans out there, the gig is up and pretty soon parity and mediocrity will just be one in the same.
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