While the majority of NFL games are played on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays, it feels like the league is hoping to schedule more of its matchups on the days in between.
Just last week, the NFL scheduled a rare Friday game at the beginning of the season — something that hasn’t happened in over half a century, according to Sports Illustrated. The NFL has also made Christmas Day games an annual tradition, with the next one falling on a Wednesday.
And in 2023, league commissioner Roger Goodell voiced his support for more flexible scheduling, and even referred to the “flexibility” of game days during the COVID-19 pandemic — which NBC Sports took to mean that the NFL is hoping to one day schedule games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. (During the 2020 season, some of the postponed games took place on Tuesday or Wednesday.)
This coming season, the Kansas City Chiefs also have games scheduled for every night of the week except Tuesdays (not consecutively, of course), including a Black Friday game on Amazon Prime Video, the Associated Press pointed out.
But contrary to how it may seem, the NFL cannot simply schedule games whenever it sees fit, at least not yet.
Back in 1961, congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 which, in addition to defining how a sports league can pool their broadcasting rights, included a provision that restricted NFL telecasts on certain days, so as not to steal eyeballs from high school or college games.
This provision prohibits telecasts on Fridays after 6 p.m. and all day on Saturdays between the second Friday in September and the second Saturday in December, but only if there’s a high school or college game being played within 75 miles of the NFL’s.
So why was the NFL able to air a game between the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles this past Friday? It’s because it fell on the first Friday of September, before the restriction period kicks in. The game was also played in Brazil, which is well over 75 miles away from any U.S. college or high school.
Perhaps most interestingly, Friday’s game was streamed on Peacock exclusively, meaning it may have fallen outside of the rules of the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act. (It’s unclear if streaming-only games can be held to the stipulations of the decades-old policy; NBC Sports had once suggested that it’s only a matter of time before the Sports Broadcasting Act will need to be tweaked to include streaming guidelines, too.)
The upcoming Black Friday game will be streaming too, but it starts at 3 p.m. — and therefore complies with the current requirement that a “substantial part” of the game won’t be taking place after 6 o’clock on a Friday.
In any case, the NFL’s actions in recent years have made it clear that officials and NFL executives are eager to provide more football to more fans than ever before.
“They love money. And we’ve found that they can’t give us enough football yet,” said sportscaster Dan Patrick, speaking to the hosts of The Sports Network’s “OverDrive” radio show, when asked if he believed the NFL would “take over” additional nights of the week.
Ultimately, Patrick said he believed the demands of the game on the players would make it hard to normalize shorter weeks.
“They’ll go for an 18th game,” he said. “I don’t know if they’ll go for another night of football anytime soon.”