Dear NFL, Give Us Back Our Thursday Nights!

You tried…

The NFL rolled out regular season Thursday night football games just a few years ago to much fanfare. The idea of “more football equals good for everyone,” was pretty much generally accepted across the board with little-to-no argument from anyone——especially fans.

Now, looking back at dozens of Thursday night games already in the books, it’s time to say: Enough is enough!

It Waters Down the Product

The NFL is supposed to be a meritocracy.

That’s the bill of goods sold by every piece of messaging pumped out by the league and its partners all the way down to the lowest levels of community flag football. Only the best will be chosen. Only the strong survive. Weakness will not be tolerated. There are winners. There are losers. More importantly, there are benefits from winning and consequences to losing.

Except, not when the NFL schedules.

The league has made a concerted effort in recent years to make sure every single team is properly featured in primetime, and Thursday Night Football has been a big piece of that effort. If you’re looking at one of the fundamental reasons viewership is down, look no further. The NFL chose—-consciously chose–a path that involved showcasing less talented football players, and the media pecking order means that a lot of them get pushed to Thursday nights.

Generally speaking, ESPN and NBC don’t want to showcase the Cleveland Browns, Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars and the like. So, we’re treated to a panoply of teams on Thursday nights that are truly “not ready for primetime” resulting in games that end up looking more like blooper reels than professional football games. Or, worse yet, we’re treated to a good team playing a terrible team, and the drubbing is so severe that we’re nodding off by halftime.

To be fair, it’s not as if every matchup looks bad on paper. Yet, it is extremely arrogant to not expect any backlash when objectively less entertaining football is showcased in the same wrapping, packaging and fanfare that is done for the best football.

Because, although the conceit is that every NFL game is entertaining. It is not that way for the vast majority of NFL fans. Even the most diehard fantasy football players will shut off a bad football game if other options are available. On a typical Sunday afternoon, those “other options” are typically a game being broadcast at the same time or the NFL Redzone channel. On Thursday night? I’m sure Law and Order is on somewhere.

Actually, It Ruins the Product

Again, not every matchup is bad.

In fact, the most recent Thursday night football game before this column had some serious potential as the Dallas Cowboys are one of the NFL’s best in 2016, and though the Minnesota Vikings have lost some luster, they’re still a team above .500 and in very real playoff contention–though, they need to get back on the right track.

More to the point: When the schedule makers put this game on a Thursday Night, it was a boon for NFL fans. A real reason to tune in! The powers that be could not have known both Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater and RB Adrian Peterson would suffer massive injuries. This had the potential of being a showdown between two of the best teams in the NFC. Even with the injuries and the Vikings recent regression, they weren’t that far off.

Problem is: Even the best matchups leave something to be desired.

Thursday Night Football isn’t accidentally flawed as if it can be fixed with better and more elite scheduling. That’s a lie the NFL would love us all to believe. No, it’s essentially and fundamentally flawed, because even if they fix the teams who play on Thursday, they can’t fix the fact that Thursday is still Thursday.

Ask any NFL player or coach and you will almost always get the same answer about playing on Thursday nights–“I’d rather not.” Some may say it more strongly, others more tactfully. Either way, you’re talking about virtually unanimous consensus that it is not ideal to play on Thursday night. Heck, ask the people who work in and around the stadiums. They feel the same pressure, because putting on a Thursday night game is simply not as easy as “just do what you do on Sunday.”

The entire week is different–even for those who have a bye week before or a longer time to prepare for whatever reason. Flow is disturbed, and an inordinate amount of mental energy and planning is shifted from “get ready for the game” to “figure out how to get ready by Thursday.” It puts pressure on players and coaches in the facility as well as at home as their life balance is shifted out of whack. This, in turn, has a spiraling effect and only makes the situation worse.

Games are sloppy. Scoring comes less frequently. Defenses are less prepared…wash, rinse, repeat.

A Fix Is Already Available

Here’s a modest proposal for Thursday Night Football: Put it on Sunday or Monday.

The general ebb and flow of the NFL week allows for playing late on Sunday night or on Monday. Everyone in the NFL already gets how to do that. Thursdays simply don’t work. The experiment is over. Even if there is sporadic ability for a ratings bonanza (Vikings-Cowboys did monster numbers), you’re still not putting your best foot forward in terms of building the brand!

The easiest would be to simply shift games around on Sundays and create an extra time slot during the once-sacred/now-passe dinner hour where most of us simply watch 60 Minutes because we’ve lost the remote in one of the couch cushions. Instead of having 1, 4, and 8:30 time slots, it would create very little friction to have 12, 3, 6 and 9p.m. time slots. Maybe the East Coast is relatively inconvenienced by staying up a little later–a problem more to do with commercial breaks than start times–but overall, it’s a way to squeeze in an extra game that works.

It’s also an entirely new product to sell to the highest bidder. Put it on TNT and then simulcast that baby on Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube and Yahoo! Stick it on NFL Network and make it instantly available to people via the NFL’s menagerie of apps. Put it on ABC. Have Fox and CBS alternate. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. People will watch football at that time, and the games have a lot better chance of being good while avoiding the complete disruption of the ebb and flow of an NFL team’s preparation.

Or, stick it on Monday and create a permanent double-header situation as ESPN already does for Week 1. If ESPN can’t or won’t pay for two Monday Night Football games each and every week, that’s fine. NFL Network is based on the West Coast, and late games should typically showcase West Coast teams anyway, so it logistically makes a lot of sense. Promising the West Coast a dedicated game every week is a heckuva tradeoff for telling them the first MNF came will be starting a little earlier–it’s not a perfect situation, but it’s a compromise that works.

Even with ratings that are down this season, the NFL is still trending in a direction of “more is more.” So, any solution that involves simply eliminating a primetime revenue stream is unlikely. However, Thursday Night Football has not worked and we’re far enough along in the process to see that it never will.

Give us our Thursday Nights back!