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If You Were God-Emperor of Football for A Day?


Soon, the dog days of summer will give way to the start of the training camp and the inexorable march towards preseason (for which we will be truly excited for a couple of quarters of one game, because it is the first sorta-real live football we’ve seen since Feb (not counting the botched job that was the AAF)). We will live and die with all the updates on training camp action, the status of improvements and the gelling of our team (we hope to read many, many, many stories about the improvement of the o-line), the unfortunate impact of injuries (of which we hope to read few to zero stories), and the standard roster churn as we get towards Sept the start of real football.

As we are about to start the new NFL season, it got me thinking about something. We all at some point in our lives think to ourselves "if I had the power..." or "if I was king for a day, I would do [blank]..." In this instance, since this is a football blog, I throw this question out there about what would you do if you had unlimited power to dictate and rule pro-football for day. On this site, the simple answer would be that the Texans grow into the greatest dynasty known in sports, averaging 3-4 Super Bowl wins a decade for the next 4-5 decades, with the first one being against Dallas, crushing the supposed "America’s Team" in glorious, victorious fashion. Throw in a few humiliating defeats of the Colts and (ex) Oilers, and some beatdowns of the Patriots that end the reign of Belichick and Brady, and I think you could call it a day for my Texans fandom.

Yet, if I was given the power of a God-Emperor, and I could make one lasting, key change to the NFL, I would go with this:

The Super Bowl would henceforth be played every year on the Sunday immediately preceding President’s Day in Feb.

At first glance, somewhat anti-climatic. Just picking a day on the calendar...hardly the earth-shattering pronouncement that will alter the course of the universe. Yet, this triggers a chain reaction of events that I feel would only improve the game.

- To start, you have the day of the game, rated as one of the top party days of the year for the US, lined up right next to a dedicated national holiday. Granted, not everyone gets President’s Day off, and any mention these days on the internet of the phrase "honoring all US Presidents" is akin to yelling "Fire" in a movie theater. Yet, many businesses report significant losses (hundreds of millions to billions of dollars) in productivity from workers "calling in sick" or just taking the day off in advance. For those who make into work, that morning back is not a time of great productivity anyway. There has been some initiatives to make the Monday following the Super Bowl a national holiday so what is easier than already using an existing one? This in turn will open more organizations and businesses to let people get President’s Day off, which then acknowledges the reality for American productivity post-Super Sunday. Besides, you get a full weekend celebrating the glory of America which is not the worst thing in the world.

- A side effect of moving the game to mid Feb is that now the NFL has to figure out what to do with the additional 2 weeks added to the schedule. In my role as God-Emperor, I only make the pronouncement, not dictating the exact details and the ins and outs. Here, the recent arguments about adding games/modifying the schedule come into play. How could this play out? (Not all-inclusive, but just some of the key ways that come to mind).

1) The NFL gets it way and goes to an 18 game schedule. Nothing would need to change other than just adding the games and life moves on. The game generates more money, which should lead to more money for all involved (in theory) and the fans gets more meaningful football. There is the whole more wear and tear on the players, so that is somewhat of a downer.

2) Start the season two weeks later. No? Yeah, didn’t think so.

3) The NFL adds two more bye weeks. This would be a player favorite. More chance to rest, thus increasing the quality of play, which is better for the fans, and eventually, the bottom line for the league (aka the main thing). How the league would do this could be interesting. It could just add the extra bye into the season, so that all the teams get two off-weeks. OR keep the one in-season bye, expand the playoffs by two teams, and after the regular season ends, everyone gets an off-week for the players to rest up, the coaches to plan, the media to turn up the hype machine full-throttle and for the fans whip themselves into a rabid frenzy waiting for the start of the playoffs. OR, the NFL has a mid-season break, where all the teams get a bye in week 9, so that there is consistency in the rest patterns of teams, and the league goes with the bye before the playoffs. OR, If they could make it work, use the extra bye to give teams more time to rest and prepare for those Thursday Night Games along with another rotating bye (Yeah, I know, I could also have pronounced those games out of existence, but I am a God-Emperor that offers free will to my football minions...Gotta think for themselves). There are so many ways to make this work.

- Shorten the Off-Season. Two more weeks of football = two less weeks of off-season. Granted, I get a kick out of seeing free agency and the draft play out, but some of the other things just drag. In particular, there is way too much time between the end of the season and the draft. The rookies that are looking to get into the NFL have to spend so much time getting ready for the draft that they can’t get ready for the NFL. The 40 times, the workouts, etc. They are important, but preparing for the draft and and preparing for the NFL game are different. A sub-proclamation would have the draft take place sooner in the off-season (especially if the NFL minions can’t quite gleam the intent to make that change). Yes, the off-season is a little shorter for the players, but if they get more time off in the regular season, so much the better. As for the fans, I don’t think anyone in the history of fandom has stated "We need more off-season".

There are many more second and third order effects out there from this pronouncement that I will not go into now. However, I throw this out there to see what others might think. If you were God Emperor of pro football for a day and could make any change in NFL football, what would you do? Would you just make a change for the Texans or do something for the whole game? Something to think about as we get ready for the upcoming season.

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