Is the NFL eying an 18-game regular-season schedule?
The NFL is the best business in town and as the league prepares to play the first-ever 17 game season in history, Peter King believes an 18-game schedule could be on the way.
During his FMIA release for Memorial Day, King discussed Roger Goodell’s future as commissioner and the possibility that he or his successor will have to eventually negotiate the owner’s thirst for even more games.
Whoever succeeds Goodell is going to have another job to do. The bell will continue to toll on health and safety, and the NFL’s ramrodding of the 17-game schedule this year leads most observers to think 18 games is on the way. How can a league that professes to care about the long-term health of its players subject them to 17 games (in 2021) and maybe 18 (by 2025 or ’26) without imaginatively pursuing ways to assure players they’re not going to be guinea pigs for the NFL’s almighty dollar? The owners have dollar signs dancing in their heads over more inventory; the players should have a roadblock dancing in theirs. That may be the first major issue for the NFL’s fourth commissioner since the Kennedy Administration.
It’s something to watch and likely five or six years away from happening, but there’s no doubt that football is king, and as owners look for even more profit and revenue, an extra game with the ending of preseason football could be the next domino to fall.
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