While it’s easy to view the NFL’s current scheduling conflict as a local Baltimore problem, it could have happened elsewhere, though the odds were stacked against the daily double hitting.
Major League Baseball set its 2013 schedule last September, and they actually scheduled the day the NFL uses as its opener as a light one.
Only seven games were booked that day, as a lot of teams apparently use Thursday, Sept. 5 as a travel day before a weekend series.
But if the 49ers had won the Super Bowl, we’d have been dealing with a similar problem, as the San Francisco Giants host the Arizona Diamondbacks that night as well.
Granted, the San Francisco baseball team plays in a stadium that is six miles away from Candlestick Park, taking away the shared parking issue the Ravens and Orioles have. But the shared civic pride element would have been there.
Likewise, if the Bengals had gone on a surprise Super Bowl run, they’d have been in the same mess, as the neighboring Reds have a home game that night against the hated Cardinals. There’s also a Red Sox-Yankees game in the Bronx (maybe it will be on TV), though that’s more geographically removed from the homes of the Giants and Jets.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (sigh) and Oakland Athletics (ha) also have home games that night, but there was no danger of football conflicts in those cities.
The Kansas City Royals had the good sense to schedule their game that day at 2 p.m., just in case the Chiefs went on a run.