The NFL is an American cultural monolith. The league exists outside of the parameters of traditional media and cultural consumption because it genuinely holds that kind of power. It owns a day of the week, which millions of people and fans spend every Sunday observing as if it’s a legitimate religious experience.
The problem is that the NFL is way too self-aware.
And it understands that its broad influence can get pro football fans everywhere to gobble up any grey slop put on their plates.
A new report from Ben Volin of the Boston Globe centers on the NFL’s active expansion plans. Soon enough, the league will be playing meaningful games in Brazil. In the future, France, Australia, and Ghana appear to be on the radar of Football’s Evil Empire, with all 32 teams expected to play somewhere that isn’t the United States at least every other year. Only the Arctic Circle might be safe from hosting NFL football (and even that feels far from guaranteed).
This is already on top of the NFL making Christmas and Black Friday football a thing while capturing entire Saturdays in the dead part of the college football calendar. Not to mention the needless hoopla concerning draft season — four offseason months dedicated to incessantly selling (false) hope about amateur young men breathing life into your favorite team, not even tangible games. No one is safe from a league that will clearly, at all costs, try to gain complete dominion over American television.
The critical contention here is that the league wants to, yet again, tighten its vise grip around the wrist of a football-obsessed country broaden its broadcast horizons. After testing out three separate Monday Night Football doubleheaders this season, the NFL claims this will be a regularity soon. As in, if the league puts what it wants into motion, there will likely be two Monday night games every single week, potentially even starting in 2024.
Why? Because the powers that be know fans will watch anything — even backup quarterbacks struggling to complete 15 whole passes — if it’s under the guise of a national television audience at night. The Thursday Night Football business model is spreading!
More from Ben Volin of the Boston Globe in a short conversation with Brian Rolapp, NFL executive VP, chief media, and business officer:
“I’m not sure we’ve drawn any broad conclusions yet, but we do like the model where it’s ultimately more football for fans,” Rolapp said. “Last Monday (December 11) was a perfect example — both those games were fantastic, and everyone got to see it, go back and forth, which they’re doing on Sundays anyway in a lot of ways.”
Were those Miami Dolphins-Tennessee Titans and Green Bay Packers-New York Giants matchups actually fantastic? Or was it just a product of people passively putting on their televisions at night because they’re bored and can just say, “Any football is good football”?
Excuse me, Mr. Rolapp. I’ll be the judge of that.
Miami and Tennessee struggled to gain offensive first downs for most of the evening. It was a monument to the supposedly highest level of the game being played in a chaotically inept fashion. By far the most interesting aspect of the Packers-Giants matchup was a living, breathing Italian-American meme playing quarterback for New York. The game itself was a sideshow, manufactured drama under the guise of playing under the lights.
Judging by the NFL’s reaction, this was still a successful test of how it can challenge its rabid fanbase with the lowest form of its product. In this case, a night game puts lipstick on the pig of otherwise unwatchable football that no one would pay attention to in a bog standard afternoon slate.
“’The whole concept behind it is, can we take underdistributed games on Sunday afternoon and make it more widely distributed and we get a bigger audience?’ Rolapp said.”
Congratulations, everyone (myself included).
The automaton football league has finally discovered it can pit awful three-win teams against each other in a primetime television slot, and people will probably watch no matter what. It has learned it can place a game anywhere in its schedule and have players play said game anywhere, and we’ll thoughtlessly absorb it like bread with warm butter.
This is not a great development for the future of the NFL.
The entire appeal of professional football was that we could enjoy it in moderation once or twice a week and ascribe extra meaning to an impactful regular season in advance of a competitive playoff field. But now NFL football is on at least three times a week, sometimes four. The regular season is 17 games long, there are 14 playoff teams, and it seems inevitable that the campaign will eventually feature 18 games with an even more expanded field. Heck, outright league expansion on an international level is probably on the horizon, too. I don’t know how the logistics would make sense between teams based in the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean, but I’m not sure the NFL cares.
And these new teams will play all these new “meaningful” games in London, in Stockholm, in Madagascar, in Siberia, ensuring that we all watch so long as they strategically time their kickoffs.
Welcome to the NFL’s true oversaturation moment. For all intents and purposes, it is the fixture of American culture. And it will feed you so much football — whether you want it or not.
