Thursday Night Football

This week my Steelers are playing the Bengals on the NFL Network on Thursday Night. When the schedule makers first released the 2008 slate of games, I noticed that November 20th was NOT Thanksgiving. "What a second," I thought to myself, "why are there Thursday Night games before Thanksgiving?"

Being a Steeler fan is more than being any other fan. We'd watch our team on Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Halloween, Veterans' Day, Columbus Day, Labor Day, Arbor Day, any day. I will watch and study and cheer through the game just like every loyal Steeler fan. But I'm particularly puzzled why the National Football League continues to extend it's product to a time/day that it's loyal viewers are not accustomed to.


First, the Thursday Night game two weeks ago featuring the Browns and Broncos was not exactly the marquee match-up you should be drawing to open your network's season. Where's the appeal in that - come watch two mediocre AFC teams relive their glory days of the late '80s and have the Browns snatch defeat from the jaws of victory just like they did 20 years earlier.

Last week, the Jets and Patriots game was a classic game and a coming out party for Matt Cassel. I, unfortunately, had fallen asleep before his exceptional touchdown throw to Moss as well as the Favre-lead overtime. This leads to my second point - if you're going to mess with tradition, mess with it so people don't have to adjust too much. Move the game up 30 minutes or before 8PM so most of the country can enjoy the game when there's actually a decent game to watch.

Furthermore, the NFL was the only major sport that USED to be able to boast having all of their games available to anyone with a television. ESPN took Monday Night Football and we can live with that because, frankly, ESPN is basically on most football-watching fans' televisions. The NFL Network, as wonderful as it is, still eludes the majority of fans. How is it a good idea to force people to either leave the comforts of home or pony-up more money to find a cable provider or local bar to find the game? Not only is that bad business, it's dumb business.

Finally, since it's mid-November, I can't help but be reminiscent of my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. There's nothing like it. And there's nothing like it because of the three Fs: family, food, and football (usually in that order, but it all depends on a) how much trouble I'm in and b) if we get to play outside in the streets for sunrise to sunset. But since I can remember, we looked forward to watching the Lions play at 12:30PM and the Cowboys play at 4PM. That's the only Thursday we were treated to football. And that's what it was - a treat. I know that the game has grown, but it should not have grown too much to keep tradition. If we distribute treats routinely, we are no longer treated to them, we expect them.

This change is not a huge enough problem that the NFL will be seen in a darker image, at least for right now. But there are certain traditions and standards that should be maintained, and this is a small one that I would like to see preserved. We don't need to change the number of teams in the playoffs. We don't need to expand. We don't need to have a 4-point field goal or a three-point conversion or a Saturday Super Bowl. We certainly don't need any more Thursday Night football.

Unless you want to put the Browns on every Thursday Night - that would probably be fine with everyone.