Anyone else not a fan of the flexible scheduling for Sunday Night Football

[brdmaverick]

Anyone else not a fan of the flexible scheduling for Sunday Night Football starting week ten in which NBC gets to select which one o'clock game to move to primetime.


At first I thought this was a great idea. We are guaranteed to see an intriguing game during prime time every week. This would avoid having those lackluster Green Bay-Baltimore and New England-NY Jet Monday Night games late in the year.

So what is there not to like?

I noticed some other scheduling quirks the NFL has used this year that I assume is a direct result of the flexible scheduling.

1.) in the last few weeks of the season when college football is over, there is only one NFL game scheduled on Saturdays. In the past the NFL usually goes with three games on Saturday, 12:30, 5:00, and 8:30 start times. I figured that if NBC, CBS, and ABC were going to go along with the NFL scheduling, then they would want more games to be on Sunday to have a bigger pool of games to choose from. The downside is that we have two less games to watch on Saturday.

2.) starting from week 10 and on, I noticed that ALL of the four o'clock games on Sunday are games in which the home team is on the west coast. Sure, it makes sense that all the games on the west start at 4 (time zone issue), but in the past there have also been great games schedules for 4 o'clock regardless of geographical location. CBS and NFL alternate weeks of being able to show doubleheaders, and usually the 4 o'clock game is a great matchup that everyone wants to see. Now, if we see a great matchup at 4 o'clock it will happen to be just due to the fact that it is occuring on the west coast.

This is once again a result of having all the games at 1 o'clock so that NBC will have a bigger pool of games to choose from for their prime time flex scheduling.

The big downside to this is that most of the games will be happening at 1 o'clock and we will be stuck with watching the same teams over and over for the four o'clock games.

You'll notice that for the first 9 weeks of the season there are still some intriguing matchups scheduled for 4 o'clock regardless of geographical location (because no flex scheduling). For instance.....

New England-Cincy
Denver-Pittsburgh
Dallas-Philly
Dallas-Jacksonville
Jacksonville-Washington
Kansas City-Pittsburgh
Washington-Indy

all these games are 4 o'clock starts and take place on the East Coast, but none of these is after week 9, and why.....because of flex scheduling.


3.) Sunday Ticket Subscribers should be unhappy. THere will be less games to flip through and choose from for the four o'clock games. In fact, there is one week (week 12) when there is ONLY ONE 4 o'clock game (oakland at san diego).



so after thinking about, maybe I'm not such a fan of flex scheduling

 

[QuiGon]

While your gripes are legitimate, I am not sure I see how they are the direct result of flex scheduling. In fact, I think the reason we have fewer Saturday games is because we have more Thursday games. And while I don't like the shortage of 4:00 games late in the season, I would bet you dollars to donuts that some of the 1:00 games get shifted to 4:00 (which is something the NFL has already been doing all along).

 

[CrazyDave]

Good points. But for me, well i'm often pretty loaded by 4:00 anyhow. lol

 

[godef]

I think they should be switched to Tuesday mornings.

Aussie fans would probably appreciate that!

 

[5 Rings for Brady!!]

Do I need a NEM Decoder to get Tuesday games?

 

[Tunescribe]

Flex scheduling can turn out to be a major pain in the butt for those attending the games, especially if you're coming in from out of town and have flight/hotel reservations.

 

[5 Rings for Brady!!]

I think flexible scheduling is a big issue for winning teams that have to change plans, or sit around, as Tunescribe said. Nothing like travelling to a hostile enviroment and having to cool your heels for most of the day.

But the NFL is about making money, and that is what they seem to do best...

For the average fan, it should be better in the long run, but if you have the latest NEM satellite service (or DirectTV) you might be unhappy.

I believe that it affects the team the most.

 

[mgcolby]

I have always thought that they should split the 1 pm and 4 pm games evenly each week. I have had Sunday Ticket since 98 and I hate that there is usually no more than four 4pm games. But I don't mind the flex scheduling because I hate the all to often crappy primetime game. I really wished they would have done it with Monday night as well, but I understand why they couldn't. I don't think there will ever be a sunday where they only have one 4pm game, they will move some other games around to adjust that. Less Saturday games is a direct result of the Thursday game. Starting Thanksgiving there will be NFL football on Thursday, (starting Dec 16)Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I'll take that over an extra game on Saturday.

 

[Box_O_Rocks]

No, but only if you have an official NEM Satellite Dish which beams its signal driectly from NEMstar.

Caution is advised 5 ring, some scientists believe NEMstar is actually the other end of a black hole. They've received initial NASA funding for code name ''Backdoor" to probe the hypothesis.

 

[Aqua4Ever04]

I understand the points your're making but I still like the idea of flexable scheduling. I think the week 14 matchup between your Pats and my Fins is a good pick to move to Sunday Night.

 

[dalero]

I understand the points your're making but I still like the idea of flexable scheduling. I think the week 14 matchup between your Pats and my Fins is a good pick to move to Sunday Night.

Why move a game where one team is out of playoff chances already? And I'm not talking about the good guys! :singing:

 

[5 Rings for Brady!!]

Week 14: "And the Pats need to win tonight in order to secure a playoff spot. For Miami, it's just about respect at this point, and trying to be the spoiler. Joey Harrington has his work cut out for him tonight! He's going to have to play better than last week."

 

[wrangler]

Flex Sched is nothing more than a reaction to ratings.

Whatever the TV execs think will fly for revenue will be the choice of the day.

Sorry, don't like, don't want.

It's all geared to money not the viewer, ie. fan.

We pay the frieght and they dictate what we shall see? Not equitable, ya think?

PS: I wish I could talk face to face with all of you and discuss this issue, but the
above are my thoughts which to some may be unclear and or unreasonable.

 

[Murphys95]

Flex Sched is nothing more than a reaction to ratings.

Whatever the TV execs think will fly for revenue will be the choice of the day.

Sorry, don't like, don't want.

It's all geared to money not the viewer, ie. fan.

We pay the frieght and they dictate what we shall see? Not equitable, ya think?

PS: I wish I could talk face to face with all of you and discuss this issue, but the
above are my thoughts which to some may be unclear and or unreasonable.

Excellent point. How many different announcers did MNF go through in the last 10 years - all in the name of ratings? Now MNF as we've known it is defunct. Flex-scheduling will not guarantee a good game. It may make for a nice marquee; but then again, Super Bowl XL looked good in flashing lights too....until they actually played the game.

 

[gomezcat]

Aussie fans would probably appreciate that!

. I personally think that the Pats' entire schedule should be moved to Sunday at 10am, your time (3 or 4pm London time). I'll email Tags and tell him I want this sorted out. Does anyone have any dirt that I can use as leverage?

 

[QuiGon]

Flex Sched is nothing more than a reaction to ratings.

Whatever the TV execs think will fly for revenue will be the choice of the day.

Sorry, don't like, don't want.

It's all geared to money not the viewer, ie. fan.

How's that...? As a fan, I got pretty sick of seeing crappy matchups on Monday Night Football that looked like they would be good in April when the schedule came out. I am glad they are doing flex scheduling - we will be guaranteed to get a good game in primetime national television instead of a clunker.

 

[Mike the Brit]

The problem that flexible scheduling responds to is the consequence of the success of the NFL: parity really exists.

Way back when it was obvious who was going to be the top teams before the season started. So the schedulers could make sure that the Monday Night games would be ones really worth watching. But in recent seasons, the teams they have scheduled have all too often been way out of the reckoning for the play-offs, let alone the Superbowl. The announcers have done their best to cover that with hype about the individuals, but it hasn't escaped notice that they go on and on about Vick or Favre at the same time as the Falcons and the Packers are spectators of the play-off race.

As a TV viewing fan who gets MNF and SNF through the free-to-air channels here, of course, I'd like better games to watch. (Even the great Mike Carlson was having difficulty summoning up any interest in some of the games at the end of last season.) I guess the NFL's attitude is that the stadiums (at least, for the half-way decent teams) are sold out for the next ten years anyway.

So I'm afraid that they don't worry about alienating the game-going fan. If the experience of the UK (where soccer games are constantly re-scheduled to suit TV) is anything to go by, people will get used to it and go along with it.

 

[Aqua4Ever04]

Why move a game where one team is out of playoff chances already? And I'm not talking about the good guys! :singing:

If you think we will be out of it by week 14, you are in for a rude awakening pal.

 

[AStack75]

I'm not a fan of the flex schedules either. But I'm also not a fan of night games period. Give me eight 1PM games and I'm happy. I am quite happy with this year's schedule. You get home at a semi-reasonable time and you can actually get a good night's sleep.

 

[Keegs]

Anyone else not a fan of the flexible scheduling for Sunday Night Football starting week ten in which NBC gets to select which one o'clock game to move to primetime.


At first I thought this was a great idea. We are guaranteed to see an intriguing game during prime time every week. This would avoid having those lackluster Green Bay-Baltimore and New England-NY Jet Monday Night games late in the year.

so is it for Sunday night or Monday night.... Im assuming just sunday but since you mentioned both games in your first post i wasn't positive.

I do think it is a good idea but one of the best parts of the nfl season in my opinion is the saturday games. they are great. its nice to have a full day of 3 games on saturdays, get loaded watch them all, sleep till noon and watch football the whole next day. definitely the next best thing to watchin the pats play in my opinion.

I do like watching any 2 teams play, id be content with detroit and san fran but flex scheduling is a cool idea.

Im not sure i would want to give up all saturday games for it tho.

Kinda sucks.

Please let me know if im mistaken at all with what i wrote, i might be off on the flex scheduling thing .