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NFL To Consider Future Sunday Night Playoff Games On Wild Card, Divisional Weekends

Steelers-Chiefs last night game was the first in the divisional round's history to be played in Sunday primetime, and the league is "expected to consider doing this in the future," according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. Future Sunday night playoff games would be "for Wild Card weekend and this (Divisional) weekend." Schefter: "This is a weekend where we have the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday. A lot of people don't go to work. Why not have a Sunday night game that draws an extra 10 plus million viewers?" He added, “The NFL is not there and they're (not) going to talk about this yet, but would it surprise anybody if we never saw another 1:00 divisional playoff game again?” ("NFL Insiders: Sunday Edition,” ESPN, 1/15). Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio said of moving 1:00pm ET playoff games to primetime, "Of course you're going to have a bigger audience. ... It's amazing to me it has taken them this long to come to the conclusion that they should do it that way" ("PFT," NBCSN, 1/16).

WHAT GIVES? SI.com's Richard Deitsch conducted an NFL reporter roundtable, asking what the participants attributed the decline in TV ratings to. The Philadelphia Daily News' Les Bowen thinks the presidential election had a "big impact," but the NFL "isn’t immune to the issues affecting broadcast networks in general as technology changes." Bowen: "If the game is boring, there are so many other options." The S.F. Chronicle's Eric Branch also cited the "car-wreck-like presidential election," as that "makes more sense ... than issues such as concussions and tediously long games, which didn’t suddenly arise" in '16. Branch: "And I reject the Kaepernick theory." The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Mary Kay Cabot said it "could be over-saturation of the game," as Thursday night games between two bad teams are "hurting the product." Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman said, "For the first time that I can remember, fans got fed up with awful games and decided not to watch." The Houston Chronicle's John McClain said, "Fans aren’t stupid. Most aren’t going to watch a poor product." The Miami Herald's Armando Salguero cited the "number of players taking a knee during the national anthem this season" (SI.com, 1/15). ABC’s Jesse Palmer said “shorter commercial breaks” is also an idea being looked at across sports. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos replied, “Good luck with that.” Palmer noted “lots of revenue gets pumped into these leagues because of the commercials, so that’s really the big question: Can these leagues afford to lose all that money if they shorten games?” (“GMA,” ABC, 1/16).

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