Does Anyone Care that Fox Will be the New Home of Thursday Night Football?

Yes, I know. We all jumped off our seats and raised our hands in the air to say Thank you god! when we heard the news Thursday Night Football wasn't going to go away.

I may be exaggerating...just a bit....

News broke on Wednesday announcing that Fox outbid NBC and CBS for the rights to televise the NFL's hated by all Thursday Night Football package.

And yes, really, ask around--do you know ANYONE who actually likes watching the NFL on Thursday night?

Yeah....

The NFL's TV ratings--much like the ratings of everything else on TV dropped precipitously in 2017, the league's numbers dropping around 9%. Yes, it still is the "Big Dog" of TV programming--but the league is slowly losing people like everyone else is.

And the reasons are rather lengthy. No, it's not political despite what the Ministry of Propaganda (Fox News) and Fearless Leader say. It's a combination of really bad Public Relations combined with overthinking and overcomplicating the game mixed with a dash of watered down programming because games are no longer "Events".....

The players---they absolutely DESPISE the games. For them, Thursday nights are injuries waiting to happen. Imagine for a minute--you were a car that ran into another car on a Sunday. You might still be drivable but are seriously damaged. And then 4 days later you get into another crash.

That's kinda what the players are talking about.

And if you think I'm making this up--the fine folks at ESPN did a chart showing the rise in Thursday night injuries because players don't get badly needed time to rest and recover from the Sunday violence....

Though we should add Commissioner Jolly Roger Goodell does not believe the injury numbers are statistically significant. He said that on Wednesday.

You can read about injury rates and the NFL's response in the ESPN Article HERE

Of course Goodell and the rest of the leagues owners and executives aren't players and have no earthly idea of the physical toll the game takes on a body.

I can't speak for everyone--but I've not watched a Thursday night game in a couple years. I know they do have some sort of cheesy "Musical" intro for the games and the NFL Network does a full day of programming leading up to the games.

I also know that despite the drawbacks--the games draw enough ratings to win their Thursday time slots--though not by much and not nearly as cleanly as the Sunday Night games on NBC do.....

So with the $600 million or so extra a year the NFL gets for making the players play on Thursday means we get at least five years of Thursday night games whether the players or fans want them....

Or not....