Today is Week 18 in the NFL, which will mean that all NFL teams (save, sadly, for Cincinnati and Buffalo) will play their 17th games of the season, and I am willing to produce a binding and absolute verdict about something.
The season is too long.
Nobody wanted a 17th game (except the owners and the commissioner, all of whom have dollar signs in their eyes where normal people have pupils). Nobody asked for a 17th game (except the owners and the commissioner, all of whom know only one mantra: more, more, more). Nobody needed a 17th game (not even the owners and the commissioners, who already lit their cigars with hundred-dollar bills for sports).
But for a second-straight year, we have a 17th game.
Seventeen games doesn’t make sense. It never made sense. For 20 blissful years, the NFL enjoyed that rarest of all things: the perfect schedule. Thirty-two teams. Sixteen games. Eight divisions. Everything about that schedule made sense. It was almost musical in its precision, in its fairness, in its length.
Then they added a game.
And it’s not just the math that was mauled. It was also …
Look, let’s just say it: The season feels like it’s lasted forever. This should be a playoff weekend, not one with just a smattering of relevant games. There should be one regular-season game played after New Year’s, then let’s call it a season and get on with matters of greater importance.
Did the addition of one game make that much of a difference?
Yes. I think it did.
And sure, all schedules are out-of-control wrecks to some degree. It’s hard to find even the purest of baseball purists who doesn’t think 162 games is too many for a baseball season, who wouldn’t prefer 154 (or even 144) to enhance the quality of play and ensure that by September most of the sport’s players don’t look like hollow-eyed survivors of an Ironman race.
NHL and NBA seasons are at least 15 games too long at 82, a number that seems like it was settled upon years ago by both leagues because it kind of approximates half a baseball schedule. We can mock maintenance days all we want, but the truth is an NBA season is a dizzying grind. And although NHL players will agree to be scratched only if they are roped to a railroad tie, the hockey season drags, too.
Now at some point here it’s important to state: This is a worthless complaint. There are a lot of things that would make pro sports better all the way around that, no matter how much you scream and yell, will never be implemented.
Free ice cream would be nice.
Parking lots that charge less for the spots than for the actual cars that occupy them would be swell.
A complete game in baseball every few months would be dandy.
And so would a 16-game football schedule, a 154-game baseball schedule, and NHL and NBA schedules that top out at around 66 games.
Sorry. No free ice cream. No affordable parking. No Old Hoss Radbourn for a new generation. And no way owners will ever give up the revenue generated by the missing games on a shortened schedule — and, to be fair, if anyone in a collective-bargaining meeting ever asked player reps to shoulder some of that burden by taking pro-rated reductions in salary … well, the ensuing roar of laughter would match a crowded movie theater for the closing credits of “The Hangover.”
Doesn’t mean we can’t want it. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t make the sports better. Doesn’t mean we can’t wish for a playoff game this weekend while thumbing through a long pile of NFL options on Season Ticket.
Week 18. Game 17. Who wanted this? You?
Vac Whacks
There are lots of positive vibes buzzing around the Nets these days, but this is the best: Jacque Vaughn is making a serious run at NBA Coach of the Year. Good things happening to good people are always welcome around here.
Warmest of get-well wishes to John Murphy, longtime voice of the Bills on Buffalo’s WGR radio, longtime friend of mine and one of the genuine gentlemen in all of sports media, who is recovering from a stroke this week.
Wayne Randazzo was excellent during his time in the Mets’ radio booth as Howie Rose’s sidekick and will be terrific doing Angels TV starting next year. Assuming that if Brendan Burke ever decides to do baseball full-time, it’ll be when the time is for a new lead voice in the Yankees’ radio booth, it’ll be fascinating to see who Howie’s new partner will be.
Count me among the growing list of acolytes for Hulu’s “Fleischman is in Trouble.”
Whack Back at Vac
Robert Lewis: I looked at the Yankees roster, and except for Rodon there have been no significant additions. This is the same team that was just swept by the Astros. Where are all the hits going to come from?
Vac: I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. I see a team that won 99 games and was missing a key offensive piece in DJ LeMahieu and now will also get a burst of youthful promise heading into next year, plus that best-in-baseball rotation.
Tom Dugan: Your column on Damar Hamlin, and especially the tie-in to Sayers/Piccolo, certainly tugged at my heartstrings. Thank you for reminding us how much more we have in common than it seems these days.
Vac: It really has been gratifying seeing just how many people have been affected by Hamlin’s fight this week.
@knishboy: Do you think the 2020 Jets regret winning back-to-back games in Weeks 15 and 16 costing them the No. 1 pick and Trevor Lawrence? They give a new meaning to “meaningless games.”
@MikeVacc: I think tanking is the ruin of professional sports. That said? Of course they do.
Charles Dunne: I’m giving Kayvon Thibodeaux every benefit of the doubt that he was unaware that Nick Foles lay adjacent to him withering in pain while Thibodeaux performed his snow angel. Question: Is coming off the edge untouched to sack the QB from his blindside worthy of such antics in the first place?
Vac: I also think Thibodeaux had no idea Foles was there. And I also think maybe a different brand of celebrating was in order.
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