The Honor of Playing on Christmas Day in the NBA, NFL

Christmas is coming. In our little world of sports, Christmas usually means two things: waking up early to open the new video games you asked for (I was always a Madden kid, but I would be lying if I didn't admit I'm a FIFA guy now) and ignoring the family in the afternoon to watch the de facto start of the annual NBA season.

Casual sports fans all know that the NBA season never really starts until the big nationally-televised games on Christmas Day, so this year's lockout didn't change all that much for most of us. We're still getting big games on Christmas, they've just become the actual start of the season this year. After all that lockout mess, things will be back to normal in a few days. 

This got me thinking about playing on Christmas Day. Sure, the top NBA teams always play on Christmas, but I wonder how many players had privately hoped the lockout lasted a bit longer, just to give them a chance to finally be home for the holidays this year.

There are five games on TV this Christmas Day, starting with the Celtics and the Knicks at noon on TNT and running all the way through the day and into the long winter's night with the Clippers and Warriors tipping off at 10:30 pm ET.

Ten of the NBA's most exciting teams have the honor of playing on Christmas this year, eschewing time with their families to showcase their teams, and their sport, to a national audience.

There are 12 games on December 26^th (some involving the same teams that will play on the 25^th) meaning that a dozen NBA teams will be away from their families on Christmas—and some of them don't even get the honor of playing in the big Christmas Day games.

I know that Christmas is just a day on the calendar—I'm Jewish, after all (even if I "celebrate" Christmas with my wife and kids). Players can certainly carve out time during the week leading up to the holiday to have their own celebrations. I promise this isn't a woe-is-the-player story.

Rather, I'm wondering, if you were a player, would you want to play on Christmas?

If I was an NBA player, the answer is yes. Clearly, getting hand picked to play on Christmas means I'm on the roster of one of the premier teams in the league. While nowhere near the NFL's ratings on Thanksgiving, the Christmas Day ratings are certainly higher than playing games on December 26^th in local TV markets and NBA League Pass.

Certainly, even in a lockout season where they could have started games a few days after Christmas, playing on the 25^th is a huge honor.

But what about the other sports in season right now?

College basketball is taking a collective Christmas break this year, with no Division I games being played on December 24th, 25th or 26th. In women's hoops, there are just two games on December 23rd and a handful on December 27th with nothing in between.

The women's game doesn't get back to a full schedule until December 28th. As a college player spending most of my time away from family throughout the year, I would cherish the three or four day respite from the rigors of the regular season.

College football players don't all have that luxury. While there are no bowl games scheduled for Christmas Day this year, there are seven between December 26th and 29th. Unlike college basketball teams that travel the day before a game, college football teams spend almost an entire week in a city before their bowl game.

Say what you will about the BCS or the ridiculous fact that 70 teams qualify for bowls this year, it is still a huge honor for the kids playing in these games. That said, I suspect most of them would prefer to be playing in a game that doesn't mean they'll be stuck in a random hotel in Shreveport or Detroit on Christmas.

It's interesting to note that the NHL completely takes a back seat on Christmas, letting the NBA and NFL (more on them in a minute) take center stage.

Having said that, the NHL takes off more than just Christmas Day this year, scheduling a full slate on December 23rd and December 26th with no games in between. It's the only Saturday or Sunday the NHL won't play this year.

With the Winter Classic on January 2nd, the league still scheduled one game on Sunday, January 1st. Heck, the NHL even schedules games for the afternoon of the Super Bowl, but they didn't slate any on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

The NFL did not follow that model. The NFL did shift its habitual Sunday schedule to Saturday this year, with 13 games on Christmas Eve day and just one game on Christmas night.

It's interesting that the NFL will not do the same thing a week later, pushing the traditional January 1st bowl games to January 2nd so as not to compete with the NFL Sunday slate. The power of Christmas is far greater, it seems, than the power of the college bowls.

It's the one game on Sunday night that has me wondering: would you want to be playing in that game? Is playing on Christmas the same honor as playing on Thanksgiving? Is it the same honor in the NFL as it has become in the NBA?

Christmas night will provide enormous ratings for NBC, with Chicago visiting Green Bay (cue the snow), but playing on Christmas night can't be the same as playing on Thanksgiving. There's history involved in playing on Thanksgiving. Playing on Christmas, as an NFL player, would seem—annoying.

The NFL has scheduled a game on Christmas in just five of the previous ten seasons and just eight times since 1995, with two games played in both 2005 and 2006.

One could make the case that some years didn't have a Christmas Day game simply because it's too late in the season for bye week and where Christmas fell on the calendar made playing a game implausible. With that said, in both 2008 and 2003, Christmas fell on a Thursday and the league still did not schedule a game.

Would you want to play on Christmas? More realistically, would you want your home team to be playing on Christmas?

Are fans in Green Bay excited about covering their cheeseheads with Santa hats for a nationally-televised division rivalry game? Are fans in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City and Oakland excited about going to the arena on Christmas Day?

Are the rest of us jealous, or happy we get to watch games on TV? I guess that question depends on how annoying your family is on Christmas. For me? I guess it depends on whether or not my father-in-law is reading this.