I have always thought high school football games are on Fridays, college on Saturdays and NFL on Sundays with a game on Monday night. Nowadays, the NFL has put a big emphasis on its Thursday games. These games are harmful for players and the short week affects the quality of the games played.
First off, the games on Thursdays are just four days after the Sunday games. This does not allow enough rest for the players. This is why there isn’t AAU football, where teams play multiple full-length games in one day—it is different than basketball and lacrosse. The essence of football is to give your all for 60 minutes and go full speed on every play. After the game, you should be gasping for air.
More importantly, football is the ultimate contact sport. Almost every single play involves someone going to the ground. Every play, huge, 300+ lb. men are hitting each other as hard as they can. Take former Seattle Seahawk cornerback Marcus Trufant, a 5-foot-11, 199-lb. defensive back. Though not comparable in size to offensive linemen, he can still generate 1,600 pounds of tackling force in one hit, according to Timothy Gay, a physics professor at the University of Nebraska. These huge hits take a lot out of the players, and they need the proper time to rest and heal their battered bodies. Many players agree that the Thursday night games are not good for them, including Steelers quarterback Ben Rothlesberger, who told Pittsburgh’s 93.7 The Fan: “[Thursday night games are] miserable. It’s terrible. They need to get rid of this game… Just play Mondays and Sundays. It’s so tough on guys.”
Secondly, the quality of play for Thursday night games goes way down in comparison to the regular Sunday and Monday night games. Though a few of the games this year have been competitive, most are just not worth watching. This year, the league has done a better job at scheduling good matchups, but this means that the good teams and the division games will be played on less rest.
The other issue is that the games have horrible ratings. The division game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders Oct. 19 earned a 4.5/14 TV rating. The same week, the Sunday night matchup (Falcons vs. Patriots) earned a 12.6/21 rating. Thursday games get lower ratings than Sunday matchups regardless of who’s playing.
However, despite all of these problems, the NFL will never get rid of Thursday night games, because they bring in money. Think about it: if the NFL moved the Thursday night game to Sunday, then they would be further splitting up viewership between games. Thursday night games allow a game to be singled out, much like Sunday and Monday night. The only way that the NFL will even consider getting rid of them is if someone does a study and finds that the games heavily affect the health of the players, because after all, the NFL would never want to appear not to care about player safety.
– By Tanner Althoff