Sunday, February 06, 2011

Super Bowl Halftime

The Eye

Of Horus

Is Upon You
Football, Au Revoir 

Allright! That's it for football and the mindless worship of the final game and congratulations to the Packers. Here's to next season (hoisting one last drink) if there is one. Let's hope the players and the owners can resolve their differences to do what both really want to do: make lots of money. One of those differences is lengthening the season to 18 games. But there are problems.

I understand why the players are not enthusiastic about the 18 game season and I think that the players should not have to play two more regular season games. These guys take enough punishment.
But we still have the problem of those pre-season games that everyone despises. I have a solution for implementing the 18 game season. Go with eighteen regular season games. Get rid of 2 exhibition, excuse me, pre-season games. But, you ask, how do we do this while not forcing the players to participate in two more games?

Require that every player on an NFL roster must have been given two weeks off by the end of the season. After the last game of the week on say, Tuesday morning, teams must announce rosters for the next week, taking into account that they must give everyone on the roster two weeks off by the end of the season. Players off the roster for that week would not be allowed to practice with the team.  This approach would require strategy on the part of the coaches, so they might not be on board with anything like this that makes their job harder than it is. But it would add to the hype for the week when a Bill Belichik  announces that Tom Brady is out for a game with the Raiders and they would get to play the disrespect card. All kinds of fun would ensue.

Sometimes these things would take care of themselves when guys get dinged up and need time off for injury. If you pick up a guy during the season via trade or waivers you would take into account whether he has had his personal bye weeks yet. It would be illegal to just cut a guy near the end of the season if he hasn't had his bye weeks yet. Rosters may have to expand a bit. This rule change would really help the game and give us more real football and  more income for the owners without taking advantage of the players.

Red Sox pitchers and catchers report a week from tomorrow.

2 comments:

Waking11 said...

I'd like to see them keep the 16 game schedule and just play 2 preseason games. Fans, who pay for season tickets, pay full price for those games. 18 games total.

John said...

I am with you that the fans should not pay full boat for "preseason" games. And I agree that 2 "preseason" games should be sufficient. But neither players nor owners are willing to give up that full boat income from losing two "preseason" games. Both sides are unwilling to give in on this. I still like my solution. The money keeps flowing in like before with 18 games that count and you will like but the players only play 16 games.