Over the last four months, there’s been talk that the National Football League wants to expand its ever-so-popular playoffs. With 47.1 million people watching the Wild Card Game between San Francisco and Green Bay, who can blame Commish Roger Goodell and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for their desires to widen the playoff pool to two more teams and sweeten the league’s coffers?
On his national radio show, Dan Patrick said he was told that the NFL wants to expand the playoffs by two teams. The NFL quickly countered that no such decision has been made and any change has to be made by the owners.
Even with that denial, one has to think that the NFL would love to have two more playoff games just for the TV revenue alone. Expanding the playoffs would mean more money from the TV partners and make for some heavy competitive bidding from CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC.
In the 2014-15 season, the TV partners for the Wild Card games would be CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC. This has not been officially announced, but it’s expected that ESPN will get one Wild Card playoff game with the broadcast networks airing the others three. NBC will continue airing two postseason games spread over Wild Card Weekend and the Divisional Playoff Weekend.
Now let’s say for argument’s sake that the NFL will go ahead and expand the playoffs allowing one team per conference into the postseason fray. That means two extra games. Most likely the number two seed will no longer have a bye and would host a game during the first weekend of the playoffs. How would the NFL schedule this? Would it go to three games each on Saturday and Sunday scheduling contests at 1 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. ET and 8/8:30 p.m. ET? That would be the easiest solution. That would give NFL fans a huge weekend of football.
Or would the NFL decide to make some extra cash and schedule the two new playoff games in primetime on either Friday night or Monday night? Imagine games on Saturday and Sunday at 4:30/8 and on Friday or Monday at 6:55/10:15? Would that be feasible? And would the NFL want to give a team short rest for a Friday game especially with concussions so prevalent in the news?
And the question would be which networks would air the extra two games? Would the NFL automatically award the extra AFC Wild Card game to CBS and the new NFC Wild Card game to Fox? Or would the NFL decide to put them up to the highest bidder? If the extra games are played in primetime, the NFL could reap a huge fee.
There are rumors that if the NFL decides to split the Thursday Night Football package into half, the winning bidder for the non-NFL Network side would get an extra Wild Card playoff game as an incentive to bid which could lead to a free-for-all among CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC and Turner to get a postseason game.
Your humble blogger has heard several potential scenarios how this will work, but let’s be honest, only those inside the NFL’s Ivory Tower in New York know the real story. But talk of an expanded playoffs is becoming hotter and it’s likely that it will become a reality. The only questions are when will it happen, which networks will air them and how much money will the NFL receive. When it all comes down to the making the extra games a reality, it’s all about the money.
