Mark Your Calendars

Jets Among Teams With Five Primetime Games

The latest effort by the NFL to make its schedule release the next great sports high point comes last night, and the live release offers up a few interesting nuggets. First, the league focuses on divisional rivalries in its effort to maintain interest with meaningful games late in the season. It also looks to build appeal around the traditional Thanksgiving Day games by adding more star power to the line-up. In terms of the primetime grid, the most interesting aspect is that the NFL is directly taking on the World Series with a Saints-Steelers game on Sunday, October 31. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says bluntly, "People want to watch football for the entire season. We didn't feel like it was appropriate to take it off any more." The Cowboys, Steelers and Colts continue to dominate the national primetime slots with five games, and the Jets are high on the league/network hit list with five primetime appearances and four more slated for late afternoon.