Goodell Says NFL Will Be Particularly 'Aggressive' Speeding Up Thursday Night Games, Doesn't Seem To Know The Real Problem
By Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- The NFL has a commercial break problem, and even commissioner Roger Goodell would admit that. Thankfully, for the sake of fans' sanity, the league is taking measures to reduce "downtime" during NFL games, including the insufferable extra point -> commercial -> kickoff -> commercial sequence that poisons so many broadcasts.
Goodell acknowledges that the same issue extends to the league's polarizing (at best) Thursday Night Football product - but if he believes that is the only problem with that weekly broadcast, he's sorely mistaken.
"I've felt the increased commercialization - particularly on Thursday night, where we're going to have more aggressive changes - we're going to reduce that," Goodell said in an interview on ESPN's Mike & Mike program on Thursday.
Goodell added that he wasn't even aware of some of the extra commercials added to Thursday night broadcasts.
"To my surprise last year, we put some more commercialization in there. There were some more spots in that I was not aware of and we saw that, and we're going to get that back out of the game," said Goodell.
If Goodell wasn't aware of the excessive commercials on Thursday Night Football, he probably isn't aware of the real problem with those games, either. The real problem with Thursday night games is that the games themselves are mostly unwatchable.
That is mainly due to the fact that Thursday Night Football broadcasts so many low-rent on-field products featuring sub-.500 teams that aren't quite ready to play with just three days to prepare. Sure, with the existence of Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football, Thursday night is always going to draw the short straw in this scenario. But they could certainly put better games on TVs than they have since introducing TNF as a weekly product.
Goodell may be well-intentioned to put more of the focus back on the game itself, but he should also realize that the game itself needs to be improved on the Thursday night broadcasts. That could start with putting even marginally better teams than viewers usually get.
"As you well know, there are breaks in the game that are very natural and are a big part of our game," said Goodell. "The fans love that moment. We just know that there's times where it's not compelling, and we can do better by removing through those things more quickly and making sure that the fans are able to focus on the game and the TV partners can talk about the game."
But that still wouldn't reduce the problem that everyone will be talking about a game that stinks.
Really, the best thing to do would be to get rid of Thursday night games altogether and increase demand for Sundays and Mondays. But it appears that the league will never do that. Maybe when Goodell takes a look at next season's Thursday Night Football games to see how the commercial breaks go, he will realize that everything in-between the ads is the real issue.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Have a news tip or comment for Matt? Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.