Despite the NFL being an organization that puts profits and public relations waaaaaaaaay ahead any sense of responsibility to its players--without whom there is no product to sell--I'm gonna give them a Better Idea for free. Today's a Thursday, so let's talk about Thursday Night Football.
I like Thursday Night Football as an idea, but, as Seattle's star cornerback Richard Sherman noted, the product on offer is "an absolute poopfest." Football is a brutally demanding sport, and there's simply no way player who play on Sunday can come close to fully recovering by Thursday. Playing on Thursday then radically increases their chance of injury and makes it impossible for them to play their best. While putting player safety aside in the name of revenue is nothing new for the NFL, the inferior product on display is costing the NFL their fans' goodwill. It's no coincidence that ratings have been sharply down this year.
Here's a Better Idea, and a simple fix for the problem: Teams get scheduled for Thursday night only if they had their bye-week the week before. Then the players will have had a week-and-a-half to recover from their last game, and will have a week-and-a-half to recover until the next one. Player safety improves, the product on offer improves, and the NFL gets to keep Thursday Night Football. A simple solution, and everyone wins.