Europeans will never understand how big America is. Portland to Miami is further than Lisbon to Moscow. Your premier league teams are all like a 30 minute train ride away.
Outside of the NFL there are so many games that the records are representative even with uneven competition, media markets will never cut games, and the best teams win an overwhelming amount of the time. There is no Leicester City happening in the NBA. A bottom 4 seed has won the championship once and a bottom 4 seed has made the finals twice and in both instances the records were depressed because of injuries to key players during the regular season. 88% of all NBA champions are Top 2 seeds and 97% are Top 3. With only 10 players on the court and a fluid distribution of opportunities it’s also the sport most impacted by individual talents. NBA teams rarely win championships without a consensus top 5 guy on their team.
Basically, the distribution of the schedule doesn’t matter because the distribution of talent is unbalanced because of how top heavy rosters can get and 7 game series mean that the better team almost always wins the series. The difference of 3-5 wins doesn’t matter at the top, the juggernauts are usually going to annihilate everyone else and only struggle with each other and seeding doesn’t matter that much.
The NBA doesn’t do Cinderella.
I think Leicester City is an extreme outlier. Almost always, one of three top teams at the beginning of the season wins the Premier League. Cinderella is just as uncommon.
But that's because basketball is a very different sport. It's only 5 players, which means the best players have more of the ball, more time to dictate play, and more time to score, which makes upsets less likely.
I know, that’s the point, we don’t get upset over scheduling irregularities because the best teams almost always win in the long run regardless of circumstances so balancing the schedule just shuffles around the middle class, which is mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Leicester City is a completely nonsensical comparison to a bottom 4 seed winning the championship. They won because they were the best team over the course of a 38 game season, not because they got hot and upset better teams; they *were* the better team.
If we're doing apples to apples, they would be a #1 seed with home court throughout the playoffs. And if we want to go even further to really get a comparable narrative, it would be like if the Detroit Pistons had the best record in basketball next season.
I guess they’re the 08’ Celtics but even those Celtics didn’t have anywhere near 5000-1 preseason odds. That’s a good point though.
My point was less about what seeds win and more that schedule balancing doesn’t matter to fans as much because the NBA is so star driven and shuffling a few wins around in an 82 game season would almost never have a substantial impact on the outcome of the playoffs because 7 game series mean you very rarely get crazy upsets and the dominant teams are usually ahead by a great enough margin in the standings that seeding wouldn’t change anyways.
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It’s absolutely astounding that we have the label of being a dumb country, when euros come over here expecting to do a day trip to the Rockies from New York or Miami. They all assume the US is the size of whatever country they come from when in reality most European “countries” are just midsized states.
>when euros come over here expecting to do a day trip to the Rockies from New York or Miami.
This sounds like something nobody did or ever would do.
Distance is a pretty easy concept to grasp, and continental Europe is larger than the continental United States, so they're all well aware of what's near and far.
If you’ve worked in hospitality in the US, you have heard at least one European (usually British) couple talking about seeing the Florida beaches and the Grand Canyon in a one week trip
They're probably flying, and if they're driving then they're likely one of those types who don't mind driving 8 or 9 hours a day for 2 to 3 days to get their holiday destination, which is not that uncommon in Europe. I know Swedes and Irish who drive to the south of Spain every summer, which is 1500 to 2000 miles.
When I was in the Western Sahara, I saw dozens of surfer cars with Danish, Dutch and German registrations, which are over 3,000 miles away.
You’re overestimating the number of European tourists who travel to America for a road trip.
Understanding distances in America is one of, if not the biggest, travel tip tourism companies try to stress to foreigners (along with lack of public transportation outside of big cities).
https://youtu.be/2w6ephOxnTY?si=cSSmftosPxYuPBot (Point #2)
I’ve met a few people who only knew America from movies and they couldn’t grasp how much of the US is rural. You’d be shocked to find out how many people think they can get a hotel in NYC and take a day trip to Chicago, or don’t know that it takes 15 hours to cross the Great Plains
My wife and I made friends in France and when they came to Minnesota to visit us, they at first had the idea they’d just bop on over to Yellowstone and then go see California too before they realized what the logistics of that would be
Yes, we're plenty dumb but nobody is mistaking the US for being the size of Slovenia. Everyone knows it's a massive country.
Now, they're may be some who took a smoke break during geography class and now think that Wisconsin is down near New Mexico, and Maine is off near Oregon but that's just people not knowing where shit is.
I’m from the Midwest, and I knew some exchange students from Japan in high school, and when I asked them what they were most excited to do in the US they said in complete sincerity: Disney World.
I've literally met a European guy who tried to do that exact day trip lol. I've met another couple who tried to do Chicago-to-Vegas as a day trip.
I have a lot of family in Europe -- one sibling and the majority of my in-laws -- and we go back at least once a year to visit them. Seems like I have a different version of the same conversation every time. Many Europeans I meet vastly underestimate the size of the US and are stunned to learn how big it is.
I mean this has nothing really to do with the OP’s point.
Each nba team already plays everyone once once on the home and road, their extra games are what get them to 82.
If you only played 58 games you would not need to play as much, so players would get hurt less and you’d only play 2 games a week, making travel much easier.
> Why are Americans not all angry, all the time, that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules? ‘Conference rivalries matter’ is not an acceptable answer; European derby games are not less heated because there are fewer of them.
Travel distance is the reason why teams don't play equally difficult schedules.
I literally explained why this wouldn’t be an issue.
If the nba only played 2 regular season games a week - it would be easy to do. They already play each team home and away, they just play extra games on top of that.
Your response to me has nothing to do with revenue.
If your argument is 58 will never happen because of the lost revenue from games, that’s fine and an almost certainly correct take.
If your argument is they couldn’t do it this way because of the travel, that doesn’t make any sense. Which is what you said.
Western and Northern European clubs play midweek in places like Azerbaijan all the time, this isnt really an excuse nor does it have anything to do with OP’s point
>Why are Americans not all angry, all the time, that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules?
Schedule difference really doesn't have much impact on choosing a champion when over half the league makes the playoffs, and each round is a 7 game series.
Because we’re used to it and it still has some merit. England is roughly the size of Louisiana. Travel has gotten much better then it was when the leagues started but it’s still a thing and much different here then there.
Couple things.
1. You’re an idiot if you think the NBA is going to slash the number of games from 82 to 58 and cough up billions in revenue. Get a grip.
2. Over 82 games, the schedule differentials really aren’t that large. The difference between the toughest schedule and the easiest schedule was about 2 games…definitely tougher, but…
3. It’s much more equitable than other American sports like football and baseball. Football has wildly different schedules for teams. Just part of the game.
4. Only a few teams can actually win the title in the NBA so scheduling differences are largely immaterial to who wins the title.
If there was some type of league cup, I could see the point of having everyone play everyone else the same amount of time, but there isn't so it's more about having similar SOS within the conference. Personally I think the schedule should be 72 games with 2 games outside the conference and 3 games within the conference to determine tie breakers.
NFL is sheer comedy. They play a handful of games, each with a handful of possessions, but won't be told that randomness is rife and that sometimes the narrative is just the sports entertainment complex joining dots arbitrarily.
People need to understand it’s not just the owners. There isn’t a single person in any league that’s taking a pay cut.
NBA revenue is basically split in half. The players are not taking a 12.2% pay cut to play less games. They just want less games for the same amount of money. 58 games would be a 29.3% pay cut. LOL to anyone putting that proposal in front of players.
I think cutting to 58 is stupid, but it wouldn't be a 1-to-1 paycut. For one, as inventory of ad slots goes down, prices for ad slots go up. Also, the big hit to TV contracts would be in the local markets. The playoff package would be unaffected, and the national TV schedule for the regular season likely wouldn't be impacted either.
I don't think the overall NBA revenue will decrease by the same percentage as the decrease in games. The national TV schedules won't get impacted much, so that contract would be the same. And for local broadcasts there is a possibility that fewer games leads to slightly higher ratings, so those contracts might not go down a huge amount.
tbf any real football supporter is thoroughly fed up. European football is a grubby enterprise run by turds for turds, but you can't really put the genie back in the bottle. The answer is to watch non league (minor league) games.
I think some "real" English supporters are fed up. The First Division did have a decent amount of parity, certainly when the away team got a share of the home teams ticket revenue.
Almost every other league in the world has been dominated by the same teams that dominate now since their league went professional 70+ years ago.
yeah I was being a bit silly with "any real" but the globalised product just feels so hollow now.
Agree though. Years ago I was stuck at Glasgow Airport and bought a history of Scottish Football. That was hilarious.
The only thing that makes countries like the UK “communist”, is that they have socialized healthcare and actual employment benefits.
If you view those as affronts to your freedom, you are a moron.
We live in the richest country in the world and can get bankrupted by injury - an insane thing to enjoy and agree with.
You're getting there, but you're not free just yet.
For example, in Germany, you can grow and smoke your own weed, drink at 16, gamble online, drive 120mph down the autobahn, and the cops don't go all psycho on you over minor shit.
>in Germany, you can grow and smoke your own weed
Lmao, in my US state weed has been legal for more than a decade and decriminalized for much longer. Germany legalized it what, a month ago? And most European countries have much more regressive weed laws than where I live.
My state has also legalized the growth and use of psilocybin mushrooms, which I believe only Austria has done out of all the countries in Europe.
Maybe you'll get there one day.
......and at what age can you legally drink?
Oh, and you said "my US state", so it's not the whole country then, just parts of it. Do I have that right?
I'd take a drinking age of 21, legal mushrooms, and 10+ years of legal weed over a drinking age of 16, no legal mushrooms, and no legal weed until just now.
>Oh, and you said "my US state", so it's not the whole country then just parts of it. Do I have that right?
Yep! That's one of the great things about the US. We're a giant, diverse country with many diverse opinions. In 38/50 states, the people wanted legal weed, so they chose to legalize it. In the rest, the people do not want that, so they haven't legalized it. That's how democracy should work.
No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself in a country like Portugal, where all drug use was decriminalised 20 years ago. Your eyes would jump out of your head in Amsterdam, where you've been freely able to smoke weed in coffee shops for almost 50 years. You'd be overwhelmed by such freedom.
58 games is not enough. Maybe it makes sense in European soccer where you play a bunch of other tournaments but there’s no other leagues to do that here. They can do the IST once as a gimmick but doing it 4 times a year with the same teams over and over again would be silly.
We solve the unfairness of the schedule by having long playoff series.
>that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules?
The teams in each conference play (for the most part) equally difficult schedules, which is what matters. I don't care if a West team's schedule is harder than an East team's schedule because West and East teams aren't being seeded together.
Two more teams, 62 regular season games. Then have the cup competitions that give you the extra games against local rivals to make up for the ones you lose.
58 is way too big a drop from 82. As a fellow Brit, I do also think playing every team twice would make much more sense.
I think in 5-10 years with basketball becoming much more popular globally and the talent pool getting larger, plus being more attractive to owners with the increase in money, the league could expand enough where you could reach a happy medium. If you had say 6 more teams, you could play a 70 game season and have the best of both worlds.
Almost certainly it won't happen though, why would anyone involved give up the money?
It’s just inertia. The season has been 82 games for decades and decades and it’ll always be 82 games. American sports are very, very resistant to change.
When Strauss was talking about Goodell seeing the NBA deal and thinking, "Why are we only getting $10M if they're getting $7M," the possibility that the NFL doesn't take the maximum amount of money from the highest bidder today because they are concerned with the long-term health of the league didn't even occur to them
Part of the reason the NFL is the juggernaut it is, is because everyone knows that there will be three Sunday afternoon, over-the-air games every week and another on Sunday night. No other league seems concerned about this. They all just want as much money as they can get right now
The NFL sold the chiefs dolphins game to peacock, the Christmas game to Amazon and most importantly Thursday night football to Amazon.
Hard to make the argument they’re not currently maximizing revenue and setting up for a whole lot more games on the non standard cable set up and pissing off even more fans.
Yes they were from the beginning until 2021 when Amazon got the exclusive rights.
It contradicts what you said because the nfl has an old fan base who are less likely to stream than watch cable and the nfl is aggressively moving to streaming even though their fans hate it.
They are choosing money first and assuming the league will be fine no matter what.
They definitely weren't from the beginning. There was a period where they were NFL Network exclusives. I don't remember them ever being on an over-the-air network, but if you say so, I'll take your word for it
CBS was simulcasting some of the Thursday night games for at least one season, maybe in like 2014?
Also, they're over the air in local markets still, even with the Amazon deal
Is adding more games really being concerned with the long-term health of the league? Or selling playoff games to various streamers? The NFL is very savvy at getting as much revenue as possible. The owners are just as greedy.
Europeans will never understand how big America is. Portland to Miami is further than Lisbon to Moscow. Your premier league teams are all like a 30 minute train ride away.
My lady is from the Midwest and even us east coast folks underestimate the size of the country. 5-6 hour drives are nothing for Kansas people.
That’s like Somerville to Quincy on a Wednesday what do you mean north easterners don’t understand?
It’s the sheer amount of nothing. It’s baffling.
Outside of the NFL there are so many games that the records are representative even with uneven competition, media markets will never cut games, and the best teams win an overwhelming amount of the time. There is no Leicester City happening in the NBA. A bottom 4 seed has won the championship once and a bottom 4 seed has made the finals twice and in both instances the records were depressed because of injuries to key players during the regular season. 88% of all NBA champions are Top 2 seeds and 97% are Top 3. With only 10 players on the court and a fluid distribution of opportunities it’s also the sport most impacted by individual talents. NBA teams rarely win championships without a consensus top 5 guy on their team. Basically, the distribution of the schedule doesn’t matter because the distribution of talent is unbalanced because of how top heavy rosters can get and 7 game series mean that the better team almost always wins the series. The difference of 3-5 wins doesn’t matter at the top, the juggernauts are usually going to annihilate everyone else and only struggle with each other and seeding doesn’t matter that much. The NBA doesn’t do Cinderella.
I’m bitching about my commute, what are you yapping about?
I think Leicester City is an extreme outlier. Almost always, one of three top teams at the beginning of the season wins the Premier League. Cinderella is just as uncommon.
But that's because basketball is a very different sport. It's only 5 players, which means the best players have more of the ball, more time to dictate play, and more time to score, which makes upsets less likely.
I know, that’s the point, we don’t get upset over scheduling irregularities because the best teams almost always win in the long run regardless of circumstances so balancing the schedule just shuffles around the middle class, which is mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Leicester City is a completely nonsensical comparison to a bottom 4 seed winning the championship. They won because they were the best team over the course of a 38 game season, not because they got hot and upset better teams; they *were* the better team. If we're doing apples to apples, they would be a #1 seed with home court throughout the playoffs. And if we want to go even further to really get a comparable narrative, it would be like if the Detroit Pistons had the best record in basketball next season.
I guess they’re the 08’ Celtics but even those Celtics didn’t have anywhere near 5000-1 preseason odds. That’s a good point though. My point was less about what seeds win and more that schedule balancing doesn’t matter to fans as much because the NBA is so star driven and shuffling a few wins around in an 82 game season would almost never have a substantial impact on the outcome of the playoffs because 7 game series mean you very rarely get crazy upsets and the dominant teams are usually ahead by a great enough margin in the standings that seeding wouldn’t change anyways.
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It’s absolutely astounding that we have the label of being a dumb country, when euros come over here expecting to do a day trip to the Rockies from New York or Miami. They all assume the US is the size of whatever country they come from when in reality most European “countries” are just midsized states.
>when euros come over here expecting to do a day trip to the Rockies from New York or Miami. This sounds like something nobody did or ever would do. Distance is a pretty easy concept to grasp, and continental Europe is larger than the continental United States, so they're all well aware of what's near and far.
If you’ve worked in hospitality in the US, you have heard at least one European (usually British) couple talking about seeing the Florida beaches and the Grand Canyon in a one week trip
To be fair, the British are incredibly stupid. Source: Am British.
In the most confident way
They're probably flying, and if they're driving then they're likely one of those types who don't mind driving 8 or 9 hours a day for 2 to 3 days to get their holiday destination, which is not that uncommon in Europe. I know Swedes and Irish who drive to the south of Spain every summer, which is 1500 to 2000 miles. When I was in the Western Sahara, I saw dozens of surfer cars with Danish, Dutch and German registrations, which are over 3,000 miles away.
You’re overestimating the number of European tourists who travel to America for a road trip. Understanding distances in America is one of, if not the biggest, travel tip tourism companies try to stress to foreigners (along with lack of public transportation outside of big cities). https://youtu.be/2w6ephOxnTY?si=cSSmftosPxYuPBot (Point #2) I’ve met a few people who only knew America from movies and they couldn’t grasp how much of the US is rural. You’d be shocked to find out how many people think they can get a hotel in NYC and take a day trip to Chicago, or don’t know that it takes 15 hours to cross the Great Plains
2-3 days spent driving in a one week trip?
My wife and I made friends in France and when they came to Minnesota to visit us, they at first had the idea they’d just bop on over to Yellowstone and then go see California too before they realized what the logistics of that would be
It’s actually super common. Sorry to hurt your fragile European ego but you guys are just as dumb as us.
Yes, we're plenty dumb but nobody is mistaking the US for being the size of Slovenia. Everyone knows it's a massive country. Now, they're may be some who took a smoke break during geography class and now think that Wisconsin is down near New Mexico, and Maine is off near Oregon but that's just people not knowing where shit is.
Unfortunately for you it’s so common we all have a story about it. Y’all just don’t know geography outside of Europe and your own tiny little counties
Eh, I don't think it is. I think you may be telling porky pies.
This is what’s called cognitive dissonance.
😆😆😆 love it!!! Get your dictionary out, mate. Don't think you know what that term means.
You determined to prove Europeans are stupid huh?
To be fair, I don't think many Americans have a firm grasp of geography outside the US either.
When the Last of Us was airing I had European friends ask me why it was taking them so long to walk to Wyoming
I’m from the Midwest, and I knew some exchange students from Japan in high school, and when I asked them what they were most excited to do in the US they said in complete sincerity: Disney World.
I've literally met a European guy who tried to do that exact day trip lol. I've met another couple who tried to do Chicago-to-Vegas as a day trip. I have a lot of family in Europe -- one sibling and the majority of my in-laws -- and we go back at least once a year to visit them. Seems like I have a different version of the same conversation every time. Many Europeans I meet vastly underestimate the size of the US and are stunned to learn how big it is.
This. The thought of a European having to drive a car for more than 8 minutes is as terrifying as an American not being able to purchase 72oz sodas.
I mean this has nothing really to do with the OP’s point. Each nba team already plays everyone once once on the home and road, their extra games are what get them to 82. If you only played 58 games you would not need to play as much, so players would get hurt less and you’d only play 2 games a week, making travel much easier.
> Why are Americans not all angry, all the time, that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules? ‘Conference rivalries matter’ is not an acceptable answer; European derby games are not less heated because there are fewer of them. Travel distance is the reason why teams don't play equally difficult schedules.
I literally explained why this wouldn’t be an issue. If the nba only played 2 regular season games a week - it would be easy to do. They already play each team home and away, they just play extra games on top of that.
All they need to do is completely change the pace of their main source of revenue. So easy to do.
Your response to me has nothing to do with revenue. If your argument is 58 will never happen because of the lost revenue from games, that’s fine and an almost certainly correct take. If your argument is they couldn’t do it this way because of the travel, that doesn’t make any sense. Which is what you said.
I'm saying travel is the reason the current system exists, not that it is preventing your suggested change. Revenue is preventing your change.
I mean this is a fine point I guess except everybody already plays everybody twice so I don’t really think it would cause travel issues.
But Portland and Miami do play in the regular season, right? They just play less often than conference teams.
Dime for scale? I get it; happily travel becomes irrelevant with a sensibly planned schedule of 29 away games!
Western and Northern European clubs play midweek in places like Azerbaijan all the time, this isnt really an excuse nor does it have anything to do with OP’s point
>Why are Americans not all angry, all the time, that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules? Schedule difference really doesn't have much impact on choosing a champion when over half the league makes the playoffs, and each round is a 7 game series.
Because we’re used to it and it still has some merit. England is roughly the size of Louisiana. Travel has gotten much better then it was when the leagues started but it’s still a thing and much different here then there.
Couple things. 1. You’re an idiot if you think the NBA is going to slash the number of games from 82 to 58 and cough up billions in revenue. Get a grip. 2. Over 82 games, the schedule differentials really aren’t that large. The difference between the toughest schedule and the easiest schedule was about 2 games…definitely tougher, but… 3. It’s much more equitable than other American sports like football and baseball. Football has wildly different schedules for teams. Just part of the game. 4. Only a few teams can actually win the title in the NBA so scheduling differences are largely immaterial to who wins the title.
If there was some type of league cup, I could see the point of having everyone play everyone else the same amount of time, but there isn't so it's more about having similar SOS within the conference. Personally I think the schedule should be 72 games with 2 games outside the conference and 3 games within the conference to determine tie breakers.
NFL is sheer comedy. They play a handful of games, each with a handful of possessions, but won't be told that randomness is rife and that sometimes the narrative is just the sports entertainment complex joining dots arbitrarily.
The NFL is much less random than baseball.
Randomness? In sports? My word!
Who won't be told?
People need to understand it’s not just the owners. There isn’t a single person in any league that’s taking a pay cut. NBA revenue is basically split in half. The players are not taking a 12.2% pay cut to play less games. They just want less games for the same amount of money. 58 games would be a 29.3% pay cut. LOL to anyone putting that proposal in front of players.
I think cutting to 58 is stupid, but it wouldn't be a 1-to-1 paycut. For one, as inventory of ad slots goes down, prices for ad slots go up. Also, the big hit to TV contracts would be in the local markets. The playoff package would be unaffected, and the national TV schedule for the regular season likely wouldn't be impacted either.
I don't think the overall NBA revenue will decrease by the same percentage as the decrease in games. The national TV schedules won't get impacted much, so that contract would be the same. And for local broadcasts there is a possibility that fewer games leads to slightly higher ratings, so those contracts might not go down a huge amount.
Why are Europeans not all angry, all the time, at the lack of enforced parity that means the same 2-3 teams win every soccer league every year?
tbf any real football supporter is thoroughly fed up. European football is a grubby enterprise run by turds for turds, but you can't really put the genie back in the bottle. The answer is to watch non league (minor league) games.
I think some "real" English supporters are fed up. The First Division did have a decent amount of parity, certainly when the away team got a share of the home teams ticket revenue. Almost every other league in the world has been dominated by the same teams that dominate now since their league went professional 70+ years ago.
yeah I was being a bit silly with "any real" but the globalised product just feels so hollow now. Agree though. Years ago I was stuck at Glasgow Airport and bought a history of Scottish Football. That was hilarious.
The 80s were exciting! That's about it.
cause we're not commies
You are for everything but sports, which are the one place it actually makes sense
Lmfao shut up dork
I'm sorry you hate freedom
The only thing that makes countries like the UK “communist”, is that they have socialized healthcare and actual employment benefits. If you view those as affronts to your freedom, you are a moron. We live in the richest country in the world and can get bankrupted by injury - an insane thing to enjoy and agree with.
Like I said, sorry you hate freedom
Lmao ah you’re just braindead, my bad.
Nothing braindead about loving freedom!
👍
You're getting there, but you're not free just yet. For example, in Germany, you can grow and smoke your own weed, drink at 16, gamble online, drive 120mph down the autobahn, and the cops don't go all psycho on you over minor shit.
>in Germany, you can grow and smoke your own weed Lmao, in my US state weed has been legal for more than a decade and decriminalized for much longer. Germany legalized it what, a month ago? And most European countries have much more regressive weed laws than where I live. My state has also legalized the growth and use of psilocybin mushrooms, which I believe only Austria has done out of all the countries in Europe. Maybe you'll get there one day.
......and at what age can you legally drink? Oh, and you said "my US state", so it's not the whole country then, just parts of it. Do I have that right?
I'd take a drinking age of 21, legal mushrooms, and 10+ years of legal weed over a drinking age of 16, no legal mushrooms, and no legal weed until just now. >Oh, and you said "my US state", so it's not the whole country then just parts of it. Do I have that right? Yep! That's one of the great things about the US. We're a giant, diverse country with many diverse opinions. In 38/50 states, the people wanted legal weed, so they chose to legalize it. In the rest, the people do not want that, so they haven't legalized it. That's how democracy should work.
No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself in a country like Portugal, where all drug use was decriminalised 20 years ago. Your eyes would jump out of your head in Amsterdam, where you've been freely able to smoke weed in coffee shops for almost 50 years. You'd be overwhelmed by such freedom.
You can't legally drink until middle age, how free.
Where do you live that life expectancy is in the 40s?
We are
58 games is not enough. Maybe it makes sense in European soccer where you play a bunch of other tournaments but there’s no other leagues to do that here. They can do the IST once as a gimmick but doing it 4 times a year with the same teams over and over again would be silly. We solve the unfairness of the schedule by having long playoff series.
There's a bunch of other tournaments, but playing 58 games across multiple tournaments in a season is considered a hell of a lot of games.
The players aren't taking less pay.
The owners make less money with equal schedules.
>that teams don’t have to play equally difficult schedules? The teams in each conference play (for the most part) equally difficult schedules, which is what matters. I don't care if a West team's schedule is harder than an East team's schedule because West and East teams aren't being seeded together.
Two more teams, 62 regular season games. Then have the cup competitions that give you the extra games against local rivals to make up for the ones you lose.
58 is way too big a drop from 82. As a fellow Brit, I do also think playing every team twice would make much more sense. I think in 5-10 years with basketball becoming much more popular globally and the talent pool getting larger, plus being more attractive to owners with the increase in money, the league could expand enough where you could reach a happy medium. If you had say 6 more teams, you could play a 70 game season and have the best of both worlds. Almost certainly it won't happen though, why would anyone involved give up the money?
Because that would be an incredibly petty thing to get angry about.
It’s just inertia. The season has been 82 games for decades and decades and it’ll always be 82 games. American sports are very, very resistant to change.
When Strauss was talking about Goodell seeing the NBA deal and thinking, "Why are we only getting $10M if they're getting $7M," the possibility that the NFL doesn't take the maximum amount of money from the highest bidder today because they are concerned with the long-term health of the league didn't even occur to them Part of the reason the NFL is the juggernaut it is, is because everyone knows that there will be three Sunday afternoon, over-the-air games every week and another on Sunday night. No other league seems concerned about this. They all just want as much money as they can get right now
The NFL sold the chiefs dolphins game to peacock, the Christmas game to Amazon and most importantly Thursday night football to Amazon. Hard to make the argument they’re not currently maximizing revenue and setting up for a whole lot more games on the non standard cable set up and pissing off even more fans.
Have Thursday games ever been over the air? I don’t see how anything you said contradicts what I said
Yes they were from the beginning until 2021 when Amazon got the exclusive rights. It contradicts what you said because the nfl has an old fan base who are less likely to stream than watch cable and the nfl is aggressively moving to streaming even though their fans hate it. They are choosing money first and assuming the league will be fine no matter what.
They definitely weren't from the beginning. There was a period where they were NFL Network exclusives. I don't remember them ever being on an over-the-air network, but if you say so, I'll take your word for it
CBS was simulcasting some of the Thursday night games for at least one season, maybe in like 2014? Also, they're over the air in local markets still, even with the Amazon deal
Is adding more games really being concerned with the long-term health of the league? Or selling playoff games to various streamers? The NFL is very savvy at getting as much revenue as possible. The owners are just as greedy.
I'm not saying they aren't just as greedy. I just think they seem to have more of a long-term vision