For anyone who has ever sat at work and thought, "This meeting could have been an email", this question is for you.
It makes no sense that a sports league with teams that are active one day a week for one-third of the year has taken over the entire calendar and all of our attention. It's good for them to make it seem like they're doing it in months that don't end in uary.
It starts with minicamps and team activities. It's good to make sure that everyone stays in shape and stays on the same page. Training camp is half as long as the season itself, from the first reporting date to when the preseason finally ends.
The draft has gone from a smoke-filled hotel ballroom in Philadelphia to where team owners have figured out that they can assign players to teams and not have to bid against each other to pay those players a fair market. If the Vikings didn't keep getting up for more potato chips, people would dress up, paint their faces, and pay thousands of dollars for hotels and airline tickets.
There is an unknown element to the draft. The NFL schedule is based on a divisional rotation and the previous season, so we know who is playing who. You already know the dates, because you will be sitting in front of your television on Thursday nights, all day Sunday, and Monday nights. The full schedule release gives each of their TV partners a moment to think about football and how they spend their money.
That's fine! Enjoy football! You don't have to pay attention to this. It's cool that the Rams and Broncos will get to play on Christmas, but the league already puts its players through enough that Christmas is a bit much, and that game isn't going to be as good as the league. Until the full schedule is released, it can be something that you completely ignore.
You don't need to think about football on May 9, 10, 11, or even the day that the full schedule comes out, May 12. It won't change between then and the end of the summer. If you are a person who will travel to football games and book tickets, then it's worth it, but if you are not a person who will travel, then it's not worth it. The schedule is announced in a televised special for one reason and one reason only: The NFL has its own TV channel and there are more than 8,000 hours a year when nobody is playing football.
The schedule release show should be aired a few more times during the summer. It would help to fill some of that time, and serve as a reminder of what the schedule is because, after four days of nonstop hype about it, we will all have forgotten 99 percent of the NFL schedule by Friday afternoon.
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