Are you ready for some?

As the summer winds down, an old man's thoughts turn to the conspiracy laden NFL. Yes, another season and you all know that I think the NFL is scripted, fixed and downright fake. I mean, not the actual action, but the crafting of overarching story lines which influence how things develop and are guided. Anyway, I still love watching football. Heck, WWE is still packing them in and everyone knows it is fake. We still love watching men in their underwear jump from high places and land on other men in underwear. Yeah, that isn't weird or anything; it's just that if to well muscled men are going to hit each other with chairs, they had better be wearing nothing but Speedos at the time. Seems obvious.

I do enjoy watching football, or, more specifically, to fold laundry or eat pizza while watching football. I even like folding pizza and eating laundry, as long as there is a game on. I'm no scheduling expert or rule guy, but I have to wonder -- is there any way to set up a schedule for the NFL teams (keeping in mind fairness, distance, conference and division balance, demography and possibly orthography as well) so that we can make sure that during the season there never has to be a day of the week on which there isn't an NFL game? Right now, Tuesdays and Wednesday look awful dark without Monday or Thursday night football, or a Sunday slate. Do I care about Friday? As a Sabbath observer, not so much. Saturday? Well, there is the occasional Saturday evening game (or 2, during playoffs) and some of it might be post Sabbath (and the non Jewish world has high school and college sports to watch as well).

So what I'm saying is I want games on Tuesday and Wednesday also. Do I worry about fan burnout? No -- quite the opposite. I think that if the games were to start at an early fringe time, maybe a 6PM game or even 7PM, so that they can be done and people in bed for work or school at a reasonable hour, they could be more convenient than an 8PM game on Monday or Thursday for many people, both at home and at the stadium. Juggle the Europe and Mexico games. Consider a "bye and a day (or 2) week". Schedule a game or two in New Zealand. I'll let the eggheads and algorithms figure out the deets. I'm just the idea guy and my idea is that I can watch football every night of the week.

Imagine the ratings lock for a single game on a Wednesday night. Effectively no competition for that demo! The right to air games on the weekdays would be sold on a game by game basis and I'm sure that the bidding would be incredible as each network would vie for the guaranteed numbers. A new chip in the contract negotiating! A wild card in the wild card games. Sports media would blossom with new, daily content, rejuvinating weekday newspapers and call-in shows.

Would it encourage weekday drinking? Maybe and I do see this as a problem (I'm not all heartless, you know). And maybe this might drive viewership DOWN as people who don't want to drink might stay out of sports bars on weekdays or choose to watch something more family oriented. So maybe the tie-ins and promotions need to address (and improve) the family friendly nature of the games (the timing, maybe ticket prices, or events geared to kids and non-football fan spouses). Maybe beverage companies could be inspired to develop new drinks of the alcohol-free variety that are actually good.

I haven't worked through all the details. Heck, I haven't worked through any of the details. That's the privilege of being an idea guy. I'm just saying that I could really use a game on in the background while I slog through 10th grade essays during the week this school year so if you guys could make that happen, I'd really appreciate it.