When 18 isn’t better than 16

If something is good, then isn’t 9/8 of that same something even better?

Economically speaking, the answer is “yes, but with a declining marginal rate of utility,” but I think we can all agree that in the real world we would prefer a 13.5” sub to a foot-long, a 427.5-foot home run to a 380-foot one, or, to borrow a sensationalist tack from Mr. Suebsaeng, a 3.375-some to a threesome (if your imagination is supple enough, don’t think about that last one too deeply). 

So why am I so staunchly opposed to the proposed 18-game NFL season that has been bandied about by owners in recent CBA talks? While there’s a chance  it’s because I’m an old-school three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust football fan and a chance  it’s because I’m a member of The College Reporter, which has a notoriously well-maintained policy of stamping out and then spitting upon anything fun in the world, both of these explanations are lacking a certain something that I’ve nicknamed “the truth.”

I’ve never played organized football, but I know just how sore a spirited pickup game of tackle against people of a similar size can leave you the next morning. You basically feel like one large bruise with an occasional functioning muscle. So I can’t even fathom how awful Monday mornings after an NFL game must be, much less going through that feeling at least sixteen times a year.

What I can tell you is that the horror stories of post-NFL carnage are mind-boggling. Hall-of-Famer Mike Webster died at age 50 with significant brain damage and neurodegenerative disease. Darryl Stingley spent the last 29 years of his life a quadriplegic after an unconscionable hit by the incomparable and inexcusable Jack Tatum (in a preseason game, no less!) broke his fourth and fifth vertebrae. And I’m pretty sure Todd Heap won’t be able to walk by the time his kids are in high school. 

Does all of this misery suck? Of course it does. And yet we revel in it, a kind of psychological toll on the fan because he so thoroughly enjoys this tainted and perverse ritual. That doesn’t mean, however, there should be more opportunities for disaster. And although some of these injuries (like Stingley’s or Marc Buoniconti’s or Adam Taliaferro’s) are split-second things, the majority of problems NFL players have after they retire are due to the continued trauma they sustain week in and week out. Even if the players are compensated by prorating their salaries over the two additional games, is it worth the greater risk of lifelong pain? My guess is it isn’t.

So if adding a pair of regular season games doesn’t make sense from the players’ perspective, it had better be so insanely beneficial to the fans’ enjoyment of the sport that the proposal just has to be ratified. As a fan, though, I’m still leery of the idea. 

For one thing, what good are records that get broken in new, longer seasons? We’ve already seen how adding a mere eight games to the MLB schedule led to controversy (many argued that Maris’ 61 homers in 1961 were irrelevant because he played 162 games and had hit just 59 homers through 154 games), so why should football be any different? Heck, are current records even relevant when compared to the NFL seasons that had just 14 games?  “Night Train” Lane’s mark of 14 interceptions in 1952 still stands, but what do we do if it’s erased by 15 interceptions in 18 games? I just don’t like it.

And even if we set aside silly little things like all-time records and glory, an extra two regular-season games just waters down the gravitas of each contest. As it stands now, if a team loses eight games, there’s a snowball’s chance in a Finnish sauna that team will make the playoffs. With 18 games, one can easily imagine a squad going 10-8 and sneaking in. Is this a good thing? Again, I can’t see it. 

So, what we have is a proposal that will diminish the quality of the product (both because of an increase in injuries and a decrease in import of each game) while putting the players (who are, whether the owners want to admit it or not, a large portion of the league’s success) at a higher risk. For all the protestations of magnates like Bob Kraft, this proposition just screams pure profit-motivation and greed and would come to fruition only at the expense of both the players and the fans.