That old “betting on football Thursday Night Football games to make them more interesting” cliché may not be all that clichéd this season. Viewership is down 11% from last year, and the “it’s an election year” excuse is no longer valid. A few team owners such as Colts’ Jim Irsay and Texans’ Robert McNair have placed the blame on pre-game kneeling antics spearheaded by Colin Kaepernick. But if that were the case, the solution would be very simple; just have Aretha Franklin sing the anthem before each and every game. The NFL football odds are against anyone – even professional sportsballers – being able to kneel for that long.
Pro Football Hall of Famer
Pro Football Hall of Famer, former head coach, and former color commentator John Madden – whom youngsters might know as that old dude their NFL video games are named after – has a different explanation. According to the two-time Super Bowl winner, “Thursday night football… just doesn’t work” because “there are not a lot of good teams.” To Madden, football is like tango; “you have to have two (good teams) to have a great game, and there’s not a lot of great games.” From what we can gather, Madden is not saying that teams are bad per se (well, the Browns are); it seems more like when he says “good teams,” he means teams that are good to go on Thursday following a short week.
Theory Support
To support this theory, Madden reminisced that “in my coaching days, as players get older, it takes them longer to heal up from a Sunday game.” He further proposed that “to help teams, maybe you get a bye the week before.” The Washington Redskins could have used something along those lines. The Skins played the Green Bay Packers at home on Monday and then had to travel to Dallas to face the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. “That’s wrong. That’s an oops,” Madden said of that particular bit of scheduling.
As Aaron Mansfield puts it in Complex.com, this season’s “Thursday night matchups have been widely decried as boring and uncompetitive,” with the only exception being Thanksgiving games. Madden’s suggestion would provide teams with “a week-and-a-half to prepare, then a week and two days to recover.” We have our own suggestions at this here online sportsbook, but first lets us emphasize that were all for Sunday, Monday, and Thursday games; the more chances to be betting on football games, the better. Now, our solution would really make everyone happy, and we mean absolutely everybody, regardless of whether they enjoy betting on football games or not.
Ready? Here it is. You know how every night used to be New Year’s Eve in Walt Disney World’s Pleasure Island? Why not just make every Thursday Thanksgiving Day? Like, the whole shebang; the turkey, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, stuffing or dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, winter squash and sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and/or apple pie, mincemeat pie, sweet potato pie, and pecan pie. Think about it; wouldn’t it be awesome to have a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every Thursday? Of course it would be.