It's weird that a good deal of why I love the NFL's 16-game season is that it is a square number. 4x4 = 16. Square numbers are cool for a reason. The season broke down into four neat sets of four. The schedule was based on fours. There were two conferences of sixteen teams, four divisions of four in each. It all worked so nicely.
That perfect period seems to be over, with the NFLPA membership likely to approve a CBA that will net us a seventeen-game season probably starting in 2021. Seventeen games just seems wrong. We're literally going straight from a square number to a dirty prime number. I'm no numerologist but it bugs me to go to a damn prime number.
Everything is going to go askew. As it was this isn't the first time the NFL changed lengths, going from 14 games to 16 in 1978. But this seems different. At a time when offensive numbers have already risen to dramatic proportions it is only going to get worse now. 5,000 yards passing will become commonplace. A team limiting opposing offenses to under 300 points will become a once-a-half-decade occurrence. The established milestones will become meaningless. I know I may be overreacting - at the end of the day it is just one extra game, but it matters.
Oddly, I don't really mind the addition of a seventh playoff team - a six-game Wild Card Weekend sounds amazing. Very often the '7th' team is anyway better than the worst Wild Card team. Yes, it gives a larger than ever edge to the #1 seed, but I'm fine with that.
The NFL won't be the same though with those damn 17 games. First of all, it should've just been a move to 18 or just stay at 16. The fact that some teams will get nine home games with other eight is ridiculous. But c'est la vie. We'll adjust. Players will adjust. We'll come to understand the new normals, that 530 points is the old 500, that 35 TDs is the old 32 and so on.
That said, I can't get the idea of moving away from a sixteen game season being a mistake. The perfect square number was perfect. 15-2 doesn't have the same ring as 14-2. Both 12-5 or 13-4 don't seem as cool and as indicative and meaningful as 12-4. I like math, always did, and football just became a slightly less mathematically cool sport.
That perfect period seems to be over, with the NFLPA membership likely to approve a CBA that will net us a seventeen-game season probably starting in 2021. Seventeen games just seems wrong. We're literally going straight from a square number to a dirty prime number. I'm no numerologist but it bugs me to go to a damn prime number.
Everything is going to go askew. As it was this isn't the first time the NFL changed lengths, going from 14 games to 16 in 1978. But this seems different. At a time when offensive numbers have already risen to dramatic proportions it is only going to get worse now. 5,000 yards passing will become commonplace. A team limiting opposing offenses to under 300 points will become a once-a-half-decade occurrence. The established milestones will become meaningless. I know I may be overreacting - at the end of the day it is just one extra game, but it matters.
Oddly, I don't really mind the addition of a seventh playoff team - a six-game Wild Card Weekend sounds amazing. Very often the '7th' team is anyway better than the worst Wild Card team. Yes, it gives a larger than ever edge to the #1 seed, but I'm fine with that.
The NFL won't be the same though with those damn 17 games. First of all, it should've just been a move to 18 or just stay at 16. The fact that some teams will get nine home games with other eight is ridiculous. But c'est la vie. We'll adjust. Players will adjust. We'll come to understand the new normals, that 530 points is the old 500, that 35 TDs is the old 32 and so on.
That said, I can't get the idea of moving away from a sixteen game season being a mistake. The perfect square number was perfect. 15-2 doesn't have the same ring as 14-2. Both 12-5 or 13-4 don't seem as cool and as indicative and meaningful as 12-4. I like math, always did, and football just became a slightly less mathematically cool sport.
