An Idea To Save the NFL on Thanksgiving
Ok, so I'm sure that most of you sports fans like me love to watch NFL football on Thanksgiving. This is not a far fetched assumption by any means because the Thanksgiving Noon game is the 2nd most watched game of the year (second only to the SuperBowl!). So assuming you all watched like I did I'm sure you were also disgusted by how unentertaining the games really were.
It is truly a tragedy to have the Lions host one of the games each and every Thanksgiving. What a waste of quality entertainment. The Cowboys I can understand because they are America's team really. Now, I know that you can't very easily just take Detroit off of Thanksgiving day and leave Dallas. People wouldn't like that very much because It is breaking the tradition. But what if there was a new tradition?
Here is what I propose, let me know what you think. There are 3 games each Thanksgiving. The teams that win their respective games host that game the next season. For example, Tennessee hosts the noon game next year, Dallas at 3, and Philly's got the night game. It would add a cool feel to it I think and would help add some variety and some added quality to the Thanksgiving day match ups. Wouldn't you agree?
3 comments:
Absolutely not. The entire disappointment with the Thanksgiving line up is the fact that the Lions are battling futility this season. Detroit/Tennessee was a poor match up, there's no questioning that. But so was Dallas/Seattle because the Seahawks were so bad. Philadelphia/Arizona wasn't competitive either.
So the argument for stripping the game from either Dallas or Detroit for a better game is out.
As far as the "make it take it" style of hosting, I think that could work for the third game, but not for the first two. Those games are the right of the Lions and Cowboys. Detroit has had their game since the 1930s. In the 1960s when the NFL wanted to add another game, no other NFL franchise wanted to play on Thanksgiving. Cowboys President Tex Schram had the foresight to pledge the Cowboys as the host of the second Turkey Day game. He knew how important it would be to have a national audience to brand this young franchise. You mentioned that the Cowboys are America's Team, and it's because of decisions by Tex Schram - decisions like taking the Thanksgiving Day game - they have that reputation.
Also, other teams complain about having to travel on the short week, but frankly it's something that they have to do once every 10 years maybe. For Dallas and Detroit, they must deal with the short week each and every season, so there is definitely a trade off.
The addition of a third NFL game is where other teams can host a Turkey Day classic. If you want to institute your make-it-take-it plan, or have it rotate around the league based on merit, or if you want to take a should-be/could-be good match up and plug it in there, go for it. That's fine. But Dallas and Detroit have both firmly implemented themselves as Thanksgiving Day hosts. The NFL should not take those games away.
There would be no griping over who gets to host the Thanksgiving Day games if not for these two franchises volunteering to host these games in the first place. It's for that the franchises should be rewarded, not punished. The NFL has a monopoly on Thanksgiving. The holiday is synonymous with football. The NFL should be thankful for the Cowboys and Lions.
NO JOSHIN
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I like it...anything would have been better than that gawd awful noon game...ugh what a waste of time...at my Turkey Day celebration it went off after the first quarter to be replaced by children's cartoons and not a single person complained. How sad is that.
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