The NFL has a Thursday Night Football problem. In theory, everyone would love the opportunity to watch football on a night where there isn’t much else on television. But in practice, these games are usually ugly and unappealing, as watching people play football with three days of rest and preparation can make the game hard to watch. In fact, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman ripped the league last year, saying that playing on Thursday is “Another one of those simple contradictions of the league, because they care about us.”
A report indicated the league agrees that the Thursday Night Football experiment hasn’t been great. According to Pro Football Talk, the NFL is “considering the possibility of ending, or at least limiting” games on Thursday nights. This could mean – among other solutions – that the league scraps the games entirely, or it could mean that Thursday games would start on Thanksgiving and go for the remainder of the season.
The possibility of changing up or eliminating Thursday Night Football is interesting, but according to a statement released by the NFL, this is not something that is up for consideration. The league said that any report that claimed it wants to modify the current format is “unfounded.”
JUST IN: NFL issues statement on Thursday Night Football saying it is "fully committed…and any reports to the contrary are unfounded." pic.twitter.com/llTFzeIbCy
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) November 28, 2016
The league’s contract with NBC and CBS goes through 2017, which means that it has another year to figure out what to do with Thursday night games. Unless it decides to renegotiate its TV deal, we could see the end of Thursday Night Football sometime soon … well, as long as the league is bluffing and it is not “fully committed” to keeping Thursday games on the air all season.
