NFL could replace college football on autumn Saturdays
The college football season seems to sit on the brink of collapse. The headwinds are blowing toward a postponement of the 2020 season until perhaps spring 2021, because of the pandemic.
But if college football indeed plugs the pull on having a season, that doesn't necessarily mean we won't have football in the autumn. The NFL could stand in the void.
As early as April, the NFL reportedly was looking at Saturday games, should the college season be canceled. And over the weekend, when the Mid-American Conference canceled fall sports, increasing speculation that even the Power 5 conferences would do the same, the NFL/Saturday possibility rose again.
Profootballtalk.com reported Saturday that the NFL likely would move games to Saturday, if college gridirons are empty on their traditional day.
What's not clear is how the NFL would distribute those games. The easiest way would be adjusted contracts with their current broadcast partners, the television networks.
Some have speculated that the NFL could put Saturday games on a streaming service or pay-per-view, but doing that outside the realm of NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN would damage the viewership of those networks. Moving a Patriots game, for example, to pay-per-view or streaming would mean fewer New England eyeballs for the networks. That is content the networks have paid for. Hard to see pay-perview or streaming working without the networks being involved or being compensated for their loss.
A more traditional arrangement would be Saturday tripleheaders. Early afternoon, late afternoon, night.
How to divide those windows among the four networks, and how much extra they pay, would have to be negotiated.
Or how about this idea: NFL quadruple-headers. Start at noon back East, 11 a.m. Oklahoma time. Play just like we do in college: 11 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 6 p.m., 9:30 p.m., with West Coast games.
NFL games finish in a more timely manner than do college games, so you could go 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.m. That would mean a 9 p.m. Eastern start and catch a lot more viewers. It also would bring Central Time zone kickoffs into play — Dallas or Kansas City or Chicago starting at 8 p.m. Saturday is not a crazy kickoff time.
Four windows, four networks. Rotate them, giving each access to the preferred slots. Or sell them all to the highest bidder(s).
Of course, all this is dependent on the NFL season managing to launch. But most people think it will. The NFL has myriad coronavirus problems, but appearance is not one of them. The NFL is a business and has never said it's not.
Profootballtalk.com also reported that the NFL would “need a one-year dispensation from the broadcast antitrust exemption, which allows the NFL to sell TV rights in a league-wide bundle but prevents the NFL from televising games on Friday or Saturday from Labor Day through early December.”
Such approval would seem to be easily obtained. The exemption is to allow college football to thrive on Saturdays. Increasingly, that looks unlikely in 2020.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at oklahoman.com/berrytramel.