Saying that September has not been kind to the NFL‘s image would be a gross understatement. America’s most popular sports league watched as a domestic abuse scandal stole the spotlight, then continued to look on as one of its stars was implicated for beating his child. Like any misdoings connected to the NFL they will likely blow over, because the league’s crazed fans give them a coating of Teflon near impossible to penetrate. The disgrace that wont go away, which is consistently insulting to players and fans, is Thursday Night Football.
It’s bad enough that watching the NFL requires a bit of cognitive dissonance. The action is frequently amazing, but the ugly backside can’t be pushed under the rug any longer. It may be unique for the league to have cases like Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson’s leading the news during the season, but the league is no stranger to its employees committing heinous acts in their spare time. See: Carruth, Rae and Phillips, Lawrence (among a host of others). That’s before we even get to the concussion epidemic that they actively hid from the men it crippled, which makes watching in-game collisions sickening.
But I can’t condemn the people who tune in week after week — I’m one of them. I watch the off-field issues and inherent flaws with the sport pile up in cartoon-ish stacks, drawn back to Sunday and Monday’s festivities like moth to flame.
Thursday, though, is where the line must be drawn. In the kindest terms, Thursday Night Football is a flaming trash barge whose putrid fumes pollute the air from sea to shining sea; comparing it to dressing up a pig would be insulting to swine.
NFL coaching and game-planning leaves a lot to be desired even with a full week of preparation. This is, after all, a league that finally embraced no-huddle offense and aerial assault about a decade after greasy-faced tweens figured it out in Madden. Bill Barnwell’s weekly “Thank You For Not Coaching” column at Grantland is a testament to how poor decision-making is among the coaching brain trust.
Subtract a few days of rest and preparation from that equation, and you have a recipe for disaster. Coaches and their coordinators have less time to prepare their players for their opponent, and even with advancements in technology that make quick film study feasible, it’s just not realistic to expect teams to be up to par. The product is underwhelming to say the least — the games end in blowouts (the last three weeks have been decided by 20+ points) or the matchup itself is a clunker. It’s hard to believe anybody circled last year’s Week 16 Jaguars-Texans matchup on their calendars in advance.
Thursday Night Football is the NFL knowingly throwing their workforce in harm’s way and worrying about the repercussions later. The cat is out of the bag on head injuries, so it’s not as if they can sit idly by and pretend that they give a damn about player safety.
Consider Washington’s bloodbath of a game with Philadelphia on Sunday that resulted in eight separate injuries for members of the team, half of which sidelined players for the rest of the game. Washington’s enviable task is getting to pick up and do it all again Thursday in another divisional battle with the New York Giants. Success in the NFL is already primarily linked to who can withstand 19 or 20 games of punishment, and now the league is giving players less rest than ever to mend themselves.
All of this falls in line with a Louis C.K. stand-up bit — language is NSFW — about what can be accomplished through slavery and/or suffering:
The NFL continues to throw workers in the line of fire without a care in the world, their stacks of advertising revenue akin to a modern-day Great Pyramid of Giza. Murder-suicides involving current players are a flashpoint while they’re current; two years later and a casual observer would probably forget that they even happened. All that matters in the eyes of the owners is that their gridiron cathedral continues to rake in cash to pay for new stained glass windows. That much is clear after Outside The Lines revealed the cover up of Rice’s actions by his employers. An NFL team (and the league itself) was okay with turning a blind eye to violence as long as it meant that their franchise face kept the dollars rolling in.
For just one moment, it would be refreshing for the NFL’s higher-ups — hilariously considered non-profit at the league office level — to stop chasing every last dollar. I sometimes picture Roger Goodell hunting down elderly citizens in supermarket parking lots, hoping to provide something the stranger thinks they need in exchange for a small tip. He and his bosses do this week after week on a grander scale, giving fans MORE FOOTBALL for a much larger cash reward.
Think about how demented the thinking is; after 20-ish years of intentionally misleading players about the dangers of head injuries, they’ve revealed how horrible the game is for them and then doubled down on the danger.
The result is a product that isn’t appealing for anyone. Coaches are left with their pants down, players are in escalating danger and fans pay for the privilege of watching a 60-minute slop-fest involving their favorite teams. Sadly it has only grown bigger, as a partnership with CBS has given Thursday Night Football a bigger stage and more eyeballs. Feeding the beast by watching on Sundays is one thing, the draw of Monday nights another. But Thursday games are beyond defense and an insult to the intelligence of employee and audience.
Pulling the plug on the fiasco that is Thursday Night Football would be at least a half-step toward human decency, a quality the NFL needs desperately. After this season, let’s be done with this nightmare once and for all.
More from FanSided.com
NFL Power Rankings Week 3: Seahawks, Broncos flip-flop; Cardinals crack top 5
NFL: 5 things we didn’t see coming in Week 3
South Park takes on Washington Redskins, Dan Snyder (Video)
FanSided College Football Top 25 Poll: Week 4
Ravens player does LeBron James chalk toss to celebrate touchdown, trolls Browns (GIF)