Sports are entertainment, so the product should be entertaining, right? It’s unfortunate that so many small things that made the NFL special have fallen by the wayside — particularly rivalry games. It’s something currently being eroded at the college level as super-conferences and realignment sprint towards an event horizon, a point of no return.
Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: at some point in the future the NFL is going to roll out an 18-game regular season, just like it expanded to 17 from 16, and from 14 before that. League ownership has profited wildly from the expanded regular season and the lucrative media rights contracts that come with it, and they’ll go back to that well sooner or later.
