How many games are in the NFL season?

There are just too many of them, as in how many regular-season games are being played in the NFL in recent years.

Everything changes, including how many regular-season games are played in the NFL these days.

Roger Goodell may make a lot of enemies by doing what he does, but he is so damn good at it. Nobody has been able to grow the slices of the financial pie for the owners quite like the league commissioner over the years. He may have been tone-deaf on a few important topics, but Goodell knows how to make his bosses money. A big step in that direction was adding a new 17th game…

All 32 franchises play 17 regular-season games each year, alternating between eight and nine dates at home between the two conferences. Thus, we have a total of 272 games on our hands.

NFL regular season: How many games are played throughout the year?

One of the things the NFL does as good of a job as any professional league out there is implementing practices to instill parity and give even the most hapless franchises slivers of hope to believe in. This is done through the draft, free agency, the salary cap and potentially most interestingly, through the competitive balance part of each team’s next regular-season schedule.

Since the 17-game format was adopted a few years ago, each team plays its three division rivals twice (home and away), one division in its conference in its entirety on a three-year rotating basis, one division in the opposite conference in its entirety on a four-year rotating basis, and three competitive balance games. Two similarly placed teams in-conference and one existing outside it.

One year, all the AFC teams will get a ninth home game. The next sees it flip the script and the NFC will get nine. With the additional No. 7 seed qualifying for the postseason, you do realize what two things are coming next to the NFL, right? You guessed it! That would be an 18th regular-season game and one more playoff team in each conference to get us to eight in the AFC and NFC, alright.

Of course, we are going to need a second bye week as well for the NFLPA to even remotely consider agreeing to this. Regardless, let’s just get the Super Bowl played on President’s Day Weekend so that we can fully enjoy our Super Bowl Sundays. This doesn’t have to be this hard. Then again, Goodell and the owners are looking at making neutral-site conference championships.

For now, look forward to your favorite NFL franchise playing at minimum 17 games each season.