Published Sep 29, 2007
It’s fall, and that means that long weeks stretch from Monday evening to Saturday morning. No, it’s not work, it’s football, and there are four long days without it every week during the winter. With early evenings, darkness, and the cool autumn air, that leaves a profound longing. The answer is simple: Thursday night football.
The NFL already has Thursday night games towards the end of the season, so this isn’t anything new; I just want these games year-round. The usual complaint is that the short week gives the competitors too little time to prepare, but I think that there’s a way around that.
That way is to have all interconference games on Thursday nights. This will put games with real national interest on the TV; interleague games by definition draw from multiple fan bases and provide new, intriguing, and rare matchups for viewers to watch. These marquee matchups should be appointment TV and garner good ratings. Ratings will also rise, overall, for football, because the NFL can televise a game that otherwise wouldn’t get wide national distribution.
In addition, viewers will want to see the play each team is known for, minimizing the viewer appeal of a highly-prepared team — which is good, because the short week will make it hard to prepare. Both teams will be relatively uninformed about their opponents (compared to within-conference and, especially, within-division games), making it a balanced game that both teams will try to play by being as aggressive as they can about doing what they’re good at.
This should make for fun TV. Best of all, it will make for mid-week football. Which I need badly, because, let’s face it, House ain’t exactly about hard hitting.