The 18-Game Season: A Win-Win Proposition for Everyone

The discussion about adding additional games to the NFL regular season has been brought up again, and with a new collective-bargaining agreement on the horizon, it has built some steam, at least among fans and media.

I have heard many arguments on both sides of this and after reading responses on many websites and listening to many a radio show caller I would like to address those of you who will be gracious enough to comment on this article in advance.

Contrary to popular belief, yelling and name calling is not the next best thing to being right. What I write here, as well as any response provided by readers, is of course an opinion. You can disagree without being uncivil, and please base your argument on something valid.

In my opinion the addition of two more regular-season games is win-win for players, fans, teams, the league, media partners, and local economies.

I will start with many of the reasons I have heard for not adding additional games and state why I don’t agree or why I believe they used faulty logic.

Today, I heard that it would negate the validity of the divisions because it would keep teams within the same divisions from playing the same schedule like they do now.

This was stated by a caller on a local radio show here in Chicago and the radio host sat there egging him on and telling him how smart he was. I, hating bad math and faulty logic, almost drove off the road.

Let’s look at the NFC North this past year to test this theory. Each team in the NFC North played the other teams in the division twice, all four teams in the NFC South, and all four teams in the AFC South.

To round off the last two games, each team played one team from both the NFC East and the NFC West, but no two teams from the NFC North played the same team from either the NFC East or West.

Right away we can already see that the schedules are not equal. Now it is mathematically impossible to make each team in a division play exactly the same teams and have that apply to each division.

However having each team in the NFC North play an additional team from another division doesn’t make this any more or less equal. It certainly doesn’t make the division less valid than it is now.

You could attempt to have the two best teams from a division play both top teams from another division to make this more equal, but since the schedules are made well in advance this probably wouldn’t work.

I also heard, on that same show, that adding one football game would be like adding 10 games to baseball since the baseball season is 162 games long and the football season is currently 16 games long.

I hope that most of the population that is of voting age realizes that just because 162 divided by 16 is roughly 10 you can’t omit all other variables and call this a valid correlation.

Does this mean that when the football season was 14 games long and they added two games to the schedule they were each worth 11.5 games? Aside from that, what is the relevance? Is it good or bad?

The point of a good argument shouldn’t have to be inferred from voice inflection. Football has nothing to do with baseball and adding 10 games to baseball would have neither a positive or negative effect on football.

A more reasonable complaint I have heard is that it would be bad for players because it would increase the number of injuries. I don’t really see this either. Injuries can occur at any time and there is no evidence to suggest that a player is more likely to get injured in game 17 than game one.

I think that this would benefit players since it would probably be easier for a player to ride out two extra games per year over an eight year career than for a player to play an entire ninth season. They would draw the same number of game checks but one player would do it in eight seasons.

These guys train year round and injuries occur in the offseason, during OTAs, minicamp, and preseason games. The best players in NFL history played extra games every year by going to the playoffs and it didn’t seem to shorten their careers.

So it would seem that a player has the same opportunity to injure himself in any game. Saying that an additional game adds to that is like saying playing for ten years instead of five years doubles your chance to get injured over the course of a career. Of course it does, but in each individual game your odds are the same.

I have heard complaints about the added cost to ticket owners, and while the economy is bad right now, it usually isn’t too hard to get rid of an unwanted ticket.

Some considerations many have missed are ramifications to local economies. Additional work days for stadium staff would bring added income. Additional, parking, vending, memorabilia, security, public transportation and numerous other variables would stimulate local economies. Same goes for television and radio.

Every employee involved would draw an additional pay check. Same goes for advertisers; it isn’t just the corporations who make the money, but the employees who would do the work. The trickledown effect of earning and spending could have significant positive effects.

The teams along with all of the staff, the league, and the television stations would obviously make more money and I am sure they are ok with that.  

I also think that this may add to the parity of the league and the significance of the draft. Teams would have to pay closer attention to their rosters since every member of the team would have to contribute in a longer season.

This makes the overall team more significant than just who has the best couple of starters.

From a fan’s perspective, aside from the extra football they’ll enjoy, if a significant player goes down for a couple of games right when your team happens to play your division rival they now have opportunities to come back from that to some extent.

Overall one thing always remains true, the larger the sample size the more accurate the results will be. Added games won’t ensure the best teams go to the playoffs, but it will increase the probability.