Fair or Unfair
You can watch the games virtually all the time now, in the ever-popular National Football League.
What used to be 10am and 1pm games on Sunday, has been expanded. We now have wildly popular Sunday night matchups, to compliment the historically famous Monday Night Football Game of the Week.
And tonight, the latest venture, another Thursday night game, one each week for the entire 17-week season.
Tonight’s Redskins-Giants matchup promised to really be special when they devised the schedule. Robert Griffin III, the Washington quarterback everyone loves to watch, vs Eli Manning, who owns two Super Bowl rings.
But it won’t happen, and it likely won’t be a good game. Neither one of these teams is great, both are trying to resurrect themselves, and New York and Washington have been shredded by injuries, just three weeks into the season.
So instead of dazzle, we get fizzle. We have a Giants coach trying to save his career, the icon Tom Coughlin. We have Jay Gruden, the latest hand pick savant, as head coach of Washington, where coaching hiring’s and firings occur just like heat and humidity in the summer, and cold raw weather in the winter.
Eli is trying to figure out a new offensive playbook, with a new coordinator, and alot of new teammates, after an off season roster purge.
Kirk Cousins starts in Washington, because RGIII is hurt again, dislocated ankle, running away from tackles, his third major injury in just two seasons.
The storyline will not only be how bad are these two teams, but how bad the injuries are? Washington had 9-players hurt, knocked out of their last game on Sunday. In a short work week, they had 17-players miss practice on Tuesday and Wednesday. And now just 3-days after getting beaten and battered, they have to play again.
Does not seem fair, not to the players, and probably not to the fans who pay big ticket prices at places like the Meadowlands and Fed Ex Field.
But this is the NFL, and the games go on, the show must take place, and they must fill that Thursday night TV slot they are trying to grow.
Worry about the product? No. Worry about the players longterm health? Guess not. Wonder what the TV ratings will be? Surely.
In carving up the big TV money pie, the Mara’s and the Snyder’s, the owners, get their paydays, the players get hurt. Seems like some tradeoff, huh?
I’m not sure what is worse, the likely product on the field, or the philosophy behind doing what the NFL, its owners, and the Union are doing.
Enjoy your Thursday night game, but realize who is suffering the aches and pains, as you enjoy NFL football on a short work week.
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