A weekly Monday night doubleheader feels inevitable

Posted by Mike Florio on December 21, 2021, 11:54 AM EST
NFL: NOV 16 Vikings at Bears
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In losing a Saturday doubleheader, we gained a Monday doubleheader. It’s a reminder that, in time, Monday doubleheaders will be far more common.

The driving force will be gambling. Specifically, gambling facilitated by the eventual arrival and implementation of technology that sends images from NFL stadiums immediately to monitors and computers and tablets and phones, giving everyone the same 40 seconds to place bets on the next play.

Run or pass? First down or not? Over/under 6.5 yards? Field goal, good or not? Two-point conversion, successful or not?

That’s just the beginning. The collection of odds and options will be more convoluted than the felt of a craps table, and they’ll constantly change and shift as each game unfolds.

Each game will bring a virtual football casino into every bar and home, transforming the viewing experience in the same way fantasy football did. This change likely will be even more dramatic. To maximize the effect, the NFL will need more stand-alone games.

Two on Mondays. One on Tuesdays. Maybe one on Wednesdays. All days are fair game, except Fridays and Saturdays between Labor Day weekend and the second Saturday in December. That’s a vestige of the broadcast antitrust exemption, which could be revised or, frankly, moot if/when the model pivots to streaming. (That’s a separate can of worms for the league, but any can of worms eventually can be used to catch a whole lot of fish.)

It’s coming. Last year’s postponements showed that it can be done. While it may require some elbow grease when it comes to scheduling, money always finds a way. And there will be gigantic money for everyone in more stand-alone games and more opportunities to wager and more wagers made and more money for all and more and more and more. And more.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, right? Maybe, but the hogs will be living pretty damn well until the butcher shows up. Perhaps by then, the hogs will be able to steamroll the guy with the cleaver and run free.

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20 responses to “A weekly Monday night doubleheader feels inevitable”

  1. I love football and would look forward to double football games on Mondays. Not good for those with gambling addiction problems though.

  2. Won’t take long until we start hearing a lot of stories about folks annihilating their finances with all this easy-from-home gambling. I never bet on another person’s abilties.

  3. As long as they make sure that when the Vikings and Bears play they slate it as the late game after kids are in bed. No child should be exposed to that sort of thing during their formative years.

  4. Not saying it won’t happen, but the more games you put on national TV the more you devalue the Sunday Ticket. They’ll need to make sure the money they get from extra national games outweighs the revenue the lose from decreased interest in the Sunday Ticket

  5. The league would be crazy to loosen its absolute strangle-hold on Sundays. When so many teams play at once on Red Zone, every Sunday feels like the first weekend of March Madness. The early Monday game, should they go to a doubleheader, will be the least watched game of the week. The entire Western half of the country will still be at work for the entirety of the game. I love football, and right now I will watch a random game on a Sunday. The same is not remotely true for a Tuesday. Hell, its barely true for a Thursday.

  6. The issue with betting on the next play reminds me of the issues of “spot fixing” in cricket, where betting syndicates tapped up players to bowl balls in a certain fashion at the exact stage of a game. In football parlance, it would be akin to a QB throwing the ball out of bounds on a 2nd down.
    If you nobble the QB or even a coach to call a certain play, then it opens a whole new can of worms.

  7. Near-daily football is not going to work long-term because of all the short weeks. I would be willing to take the second Monday night game to get rid of Thursdays, but that’s it. Tuesday and Wednesday football makes no logistical sense unless every team that plays such days of the week goes into their bye afterwards… but then that doesn’t give the team a full week off – for example, a team would play week 5 Sunday, then week 6 Wednesday, be off week 7, then play week 8 Sunday – but that would mean two sets of “week-and-a-half” instead of a single two-week period with a normal bye.

  8. Move Thursday night to doubleheader Monday night and everyone wins. Otherwise just another piece to the saturation of football which makes me care less overall.

  9. Too bad the NFL brought on AMAZON for Thursday Night games. A better idea would be Monday Night doubleheader. Better for player safety and same revenue

  10. The big bet will not be over 5 yards on next play. The big bet will be penalty flag on next play. Daily double… flag for 5 yards, 10 yards or 15 yards. Finally someone watching won’t be peeved by the number of flags during the game.

  11. Please don’t, unless as others have said, you remove the Thursday night game.
    The NFL will eventually kill the golden goose, just wait.
    There was a time when NASCAR was the #1 spectator sport. Now look at it, can barely fill half their stands any many tracks.
    It’s what happens when you kick your base to the side in pursuit of the fence riders who care nothing about loyalty, tradition, consistency, integrity, history, etc of any said sport.

  12. I played something like that about 30-35 years ago at the bar, they called it QB1.
    Played against people all over the country ,top 25 won prizes.

  13. If the NFL can do that kind of scheduling gymnastics then there is no reason they can’t do the following: Keep season at 17 games. Add an extra bye. The teams playing on TNF get one of their byes the week before they play. That way they have extra rest before and after the game and the product is better. It can’t be that hard to figure out that kind of scheduling.

  14. How would this (or how does this work today) with folks that stream games.
    They always lag by a minute or so.

  15. id rather watch one good game than two garbage games.
    .
    3 of those teams wont even sniff at the playoffs…

  17. Double header Monday games means that you will have four teams on a short week potentially resulting in four bad games the next week.

  18. Pete Rose must be losing his damn mind worse than an American time traveler from the year 1987

  19. I’ve been saying for years they need a double header like the fist of the seasons past. 1 east coast game at 7, west coast game at 10

  20. I dont’t know how you could bet on the next play,as tv action lags behind the stadium. How many of us want to listen to the radio and turn down the tv but the radio and tv broadcast are not synced as the radio is ahead of the tv broadcast. You could have people in the stadium text no good for a field goal to a person sitting on his couch, who could theoretically place a bet before the field goal is kicked on the tv broadcast. For right now I don’t see next play bet available.

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