Dear (The) Shield,
Congratulations on what was a fun opening Sunday. I realize that you're not used to hearing that from me, in fact, I'm probably one of the most critical writers when it comes to your product, but you knocked it out of the park on Sunday.
Granted, there are still some things you need to work on, roughing the passer and too many field goals among them, but for the most part the games were fun, the pace was excellent and a general good time was had by all. (Except Bills fans, who might not have a good time for the rest of the year)
Now we roll into Monday and many of us face a problem. To whit, we're going to have to miss a significant portion of at least one of the games. The reason for this is simple: You continue to allow ESPN to try and shoe-horn two games into a one-game window, a practice that needs to come to an end.
If you live on the West Coast the reality is that the game is going to kick-off for you at 4:10 PM, a time that most productive people are at work. If you live on the East Coast the reality is that the second game is not going to finish until after Midnight, possibly WELL after Midnight, an untenable situation if you're a productive person and have a job to get to the next day. This scheduling is unworkable for a vast majority of the American public, you know, those people who watch your games and buy products from the advertisers that you rely on?
I understand that ESPN is paying you a lot of money to allow them to take two games away from the fans and put it on their airwaves at odd times. I realize that, under Commissioner Roger Goodell's watch team profitability is soaring. I get that, I really do. Right now the money is coming in so fast Jerry Jones barely has time to count it before running out of the stadium to avoid the press.
Everyone is happy under the Shield, rich and getting richer. The dip that you have in television viewership is because of cord-cutting and NOT because your product on the field has been bad. Understood.
But the start/finish times for Monday Night Football during Week 1 is a travesty that must be addressed.
Thursday games are bad enough. You wouldn't have thought about this had the colleges not started making a ton of cash on Thursday nights and you just had to get your piece. Forget about player safety and all of those things you claim in public, there are TV dollars to be made.
But what you've been doing, and continue to do, by moving the focus away from Sunday is diluting your product, and your brand. Thursday night games are horrid spectacles of tired, often injured players, going through the motions and ratings have borne this out. Even though you know you should, you can't be seen as retreating from Thursdays, from admitting that they should be for the college game.
But Monday's are a different story. Monday Night Football USED to be must-see TV. You diluted that with the Sunday night game but it doesn't have to be. You can have your cake and eat it to by giving up on Thursday, returning Monday to some primacy and helping us out by scheduling ONE game that we all want to watch.
Two games on Monday is one too many. It doesn't fit. It's like a fast-food burger in a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, it's a turd on a plate. It's trying to fit a five-course-dinner into an hour, and people are increasingly leaving the dish half-eaten.
Even living in the Central time-zone, as I do, this schedule is problematic. In many ways we get the worst of both worlds. For one, most of us won't be home from work at 5:10PM when the game kicks off and we'll have to go to bed before the 2nd game ends (probably after Midnight even here) usually at halftime. Now, I realize that you don't put much stock into the viewing habits of flyover country. Hell, if you could get away with it you wouldn't even come here. But Jerry Jones is loud, brash and tends to make a mess of things so you come to Dallas occasionally, you just never leave the security of the luxury box, the chauffeured SUV or your private jet when doing so.
As fans we understand that you don't want to interact with us but at least give us the courtesy of acknowledging our fandom. Give us the basic decency of putting games on TV at times we can watch. Among the exorbitant ticket prices, $15 beers, $10 hot dogs and $350 "authentic" jerseys at least give us the option to watch the games without having to call in sick to work the next day.
You get this for the Super Bowl, I'm curious why you don't get it in the first week of the season?
Do the right thing NFL, go to ESPN and renegotiate this mess. Make the fans happy for a change.
Sincerely,
All of us.
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