With the NFL possibly expanding the regular season and with the NFL not inclined to start the regular season earlier than it already does, the conference championship games could be moved deeper into each new year.
As Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal reports, there’s a chance that the AFC and NFC title games could land in February, during one of the all-important ratings “sweeps” periods.
(As we’ve previously pointed out, the Super Bowl also could end up being played on President’s Day weekend, giving many football fans the ability to stay up late and/or get snockered without having to worry about getting up for work the next day. Reports surfaced last week that such a move likely would prompt NASCAR to move the Daytona 500, which historically occurs that same day.)
Given that the weather only gets worse in cities like Green Bay and Chicago and New York and Foxborough and Pittsburgh and Buffalo as January gives way to early February, Mullen points out that the championship games could be moved to a neutral site.
We don’t like this possibility. Not one bit. Especially since the teams that regularly play in the potential neutral sites would potentiall have an unfair advantage, if they qualify for one of the games.
The only way to avoid such an outcome would be to send the AFC game to stadiums in which an NFC team normally plays its home games, and to send the NFC game to an AFC stadium.
Even then, it might be a challenge to sell the games out in a neutral location — and it would be grossly unfair to the fans of the team that secures the right to host the championship game.
Besides, winter is football weather. And if anyone thinks that freezing conditions create an unfair advantage for the home team, ask Packers fans what they got in exchange for free-drying their cajones for three-plus hours in January 2008.
PFT Planet, feel free to chime in on this one. (As if you ever need an invitation to do so.)