Insider blasts the NFL for 'TNF' flex scheduling plan

New York Post sports media reporter Andrew Marchand took the NFL to the woodshed for its upcoming Thursday Night Football flex scheduling after the change was approved by the majority of team owners this week.

In his latest article, Marchand says that the team owners and commissioner Roger Goodell were motivated by greed in the latest tweak for the much-maligned slate of games. Citing an opt-out clause in its exclusive broadcasting deal with Amazon, Marchand said the league is chasing potential billions in several years as opposed to thinking about the fans who shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars to attend the games.

Instead it means if you bought tickets for a Sunday game, it may be moved to Thursday with just four weeks notice. You had a trip with friends with a flight and hotel and getting off work that you were arriving Friday for a Sunday game. Well, that might just be played Thursday, the day before your flight was taking off. The NFL doesn’t care about you.

They care about money. That’s it. (This doesn’t even take into account the other poor slouch, whose Thursday night ticket will now be turned into a Sunday afternoon game.)

Flex scheduling was introduced in 2006 to enhance Sunday Night Football on NBC. The NFL wanted to make sure late season games with playoff implications would be seen by a national audience, especially when a previously scheduled SNF game would not have the same stakes. While NFL games are the highest rated events year after year, flex scheduling significantly helped boost NBC's claim to having "the most watched show on television."

Thursday Night Football was the complete opposite as it was conceived for the league to strong-arm cable and satellite companies to carry the NFL Network. Year after year, fans and media members have criticized the TNF slate for routinely poor games, even as the games exclusively moved to Amazon last fall.

The truth is that Thursday Night Football has always been a bad deal for everyone but the team owners. Locally, the league is asking for fans to attend a primetime game after work or school that goes on longer than the typical Sunday afternoon affair. Between later kickoffs and TV timeouts that only exist for the partner networks to show commercials (they're not called by either team), the telecasts are certainly longer on the tooth for the fans at home, let alone those at the stadium who are expected to have a normal Friday.

Marchand isn't wrong about how much the new flex option hurts the fans, but even they aren't the biggest losers in the whole deal. The players, the people who are the reason the league even exists, are burdened once again with another wrinkle to the schedule. TNF games were already brutal for them as they're played on just four days of rest, though both teams now have bye weeks afterwards. The short rest generally leads to low quality affairs, increasing the risk of injuries for the players. 

Flex scheduling will improve TV viewership for Thursday nights just as it did on Sundays. Yet there's a good chance that it may not improve game quality. Despite many players commanding high salaries, money can't heal all the pain they endure in order to make it.