NFL Friday Night And Monday Games To Add More Playoffs

NFL Friday night games and Monday night football may be expanded greatly in order to handle a possible increase to the NFL playoffs.

In a related reported by The Inquisitr, Thursday NFL games may become the new Sunday night football if the network has their way. 21st Century Fox, NBC, CBS, and ESPN were given the chance to bid in an auction for the rights to broadcast a thirteen game lineup that is currently limited to the NFL Network only. Now it’s come out that Turner Sports has thrown their hat into the ring.

NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt says the value of having more Thursday NFL games has them very interested:

“We’d love to have more NFL games. Thursday night games might be really interesting to us. I just can’t say. I mean, it’s something we’re talking about, and we have a great relationship with the NFL.”

But what is so controversial is that some of the major games previously scheduled for Sunday night may be shifted to favor the Thursday NFL games. And some of this controversy is likely to follow the decision to make NFL Friday night games more prominent. According to Commissioner Roger Goodell, it’s also an unavoidable problem since they’re discussing increasing the number of NFL playoffs teams to 14, which would require two more playoffs games:

“The big discussion would be the first weekend, the wild card weekend of the playoffs, how would you structure that? Three on Saturday, three on Sunday? We’re looking at every alternative, and I think that’s what the membership ultimately is going to have to decide. Would you play a game on Friday night, two on Saturday, two on Sunday and another on Monday?”

While shifting NFL playoffs games to Monday Night football would probably be accepted by the American public, some analysts aren’t too sure whether people would say the same about NFL Friday night games. When news about the Thursday NFL games came out many comments on social media indicated how NFL fans didn’t like how this idea would intrude into their family time. There’s also the issue that many high school football games are on Friday nights so families may be torn between the big game and watching their teenagers take the field. Let’s not even talk about the wives and girlfriends whose potential date nights will suddenly be crowded out by NFL games in four out of seven nights of the week.

Despite any controversy, Goodell says the NFL hasn’t made a decision quite yet but it seems very likely that NFL Friday night games will be on the agenda. After all, we’re talking about an increase in revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars. In the end, the NFL Commissioner believes it won’t happen in 2014 but is more likely for the 2015 NFL season.