The NFL is trumpeting today the fact that the Week One games, many of which weren’t all that compelling or well played, scored the highest TV ratings since 1987.
And through the league’s justifiable trumpeting of that fact, the league possibly is overlooking the fact that the numbers still fall short of the last season-opening weekend before the last work stoppage.
Making those 1987 numbers even more impressive is the fact that the NFL used to launch the season on Labor Day Weekend, when fewer people are sitting inside with the television turned on.
And perhaps the NFL and the NFLPA should take note of that fact. It’s taken 23 years since the last work stoppage to come close to the total Week One viewership enjoyed in the last Week One before football went away for a while. So maybe the two sides should work toward preventing another work stoppage.