Why NFL rivals should only play once a season, like in college football - SB Nation

The NFL should take a page out of college football's scheduling book: Have divisional opponents play each other just once, not twice.

A 16-game schedule could break down like this:

• Three divisional games
• Eight non-divisional conference games
• Five games against the other conference

Add and subtract from the latter two groups as much as you please.

Like college teams and conferences already do on their own, the NFL could load up on divisional and rivalry games during specific HATE WEEKS:

• Week 1 (because divisional openers are good fun)
• Week 12, AKA Thanksgiving (because college already has Rivalry Week at this time, but that's all between Thursday and Saturday, and we could just make it a whole big rivalry bonanza of a football weekend — although this could be dangerous to the heart health of college fans who also care a lot about NFL teams)
• Week 17 (to drive up standings stakes, as the league already does)

The league could move divisional games off these weeks as needed, because its primetime TV partners might not feel like showing Bucs-Bears or whatever in Week 3. But in general, it could schedule the same rivalry games on the same weekends every year.

Designating two of the three HATE WEEKS for later in the season serves the NFL's goal of keeping divisional races interesting. Those are opportunities for two-game swings, making it less likely that teams fall out of contention by early November.

This format would drive up the importance of every divisional game.

Part of what makes college rivalries so fun is that they happen on the same days every year, in many cases. Ohio State and Michigan fans know that they're playing on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They know they're not playing any other time all year.

The biggest NFL rivalries might happen anywhere between September and January. That detracts a little bit from them being calendar-marked events. It's a lot easier to tie one game to a specific week than to do that with two. Imagine if the NFL had the Saints and Falcons play every year in Week 17, without fail? It'd be an enormous thing every year.

By paring down every rivalry's meetings from two to one, it's not like the NFL would be losing hatred. It would just be packing all of it into one glorious day.

Enacting this change would let fans watch more teams up close.

College football fans get to watch their team play 12 different opponents. That's fun, even if one of those is Rutgers or whoever. Despite a 16-game schedule, NFL fans only get to watch their teams play 13 different opponents.

Most NFL fans don't buy premium packages to watch out-of-market games. Most of them aren't running through coaches' film on NFL Game Pass on Monday afternoons. The surest way for fans to see more teams is to put them up against the teams fans care about.

Right now, NFL teams go up to four years without facing certain non-conference opponents. There are Ravens fans out there who like football just fine but haven't watched Cam Newton since 2014, the last time he faced Baltimore. Exposing fans to a wider swath of talent gives them more chances to find players they like and start liking the sport more.

NFL rivalries would get more of a leg up on ones in the NHL, NBA, and MLB.

Rivals in those leagues play each other a ton — the Red Sox and Yankees are kind of boring amid nearly 20 annual meetings — and that dilutes the bad feelings in any one game.

The average NFL game is a lot more important than the average game in any other pro team sport, because there are so few of them. Why not lean all the way into that and make divisional games the biggest spectacles they could be, like college does?

Rivalries are about bragging rights and feeling superior to some team you hate. There's no better way to encourage that than only playing once a year.

If Florida loses to Georgia, Gators fans have to sit with that all year. It's part of what makes their annual meeting in Jacksonville such a huge deal. Imagine that in the NFL. How amazing would it be if the Bills beat the Patriots or the Browns beat the Steelers for the first time a decade, and then the Patriots and Steelers didn't have a chance to make it right? That's fun. There's nothing fun about teams splitting a series 1-1, but considering the NFL's intentional parity, the likeliest season outcome for divisional foes is a 1-1 split.

The terror of a major college football rivalry is knowing that if you lose, you'll have to hear about it for 12 months — exactly 12 months, because your team doesn't get another crack at Rival U for another 52 weeks. When your side wins a game like that, it's even more special.

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