One potential silver lining of no college football season: NFL games on Saturdays
The NFL is expected to move at least two games each week to Saturday when/if the 2020 college football season is postponed.
loading...
loading...
In the wake of the Mid-American Conference postponing its college football season until next spring (in a perfect world), CBS Sports reported over the weekend that two Power Five athletic directors deemed the cancellation of fall sports and the 2020 college football season an "inevitable" conclusion of talks within their respective conferences. It's expected to happen this week, perhaps as early as Monday as each of the Power 5 leagues have regularly scheduled calls at some point this week.
ESPN is reporting that a vast majority of Big Ten presidents have indicated that they would vote to postpone football season, hopefully to the spring. It's rather likely several top players would choose not to play in the spring and instead prepare for the 2021 NFL Draft.
There would be one small silver lining if/when there's no college football this fall/winter: The NFL is expected to move games to Saturdays, perhaps as many as three per week with start times of 1 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. The league plays games on Saturdays late each season once the NCAA regular season has concluded.
This season, there are Saturday games already scheduled for Weeks 15 and 16. The matchups are TBA but the league will pick two or three from this group for Week 15: Bills at Broncos, Panthers at Packers, Texans at Colts, Jets at Rams and Lions at Titans. For Week 16, it would pick two or three among: 49ers at Cardinals, Buccaneers at Lions, Broncos at Chargers, Dolphins at Raiders and Browns at Jets.
There is one issue that would have to be resolved first per Pro Football Talk: The NFL would need a one-year dispensation from the broadcast antitrust exemption, which allows the league to sell TV rights in a league-wide bundle but prevents it from televising games Fridays or Saturdays from Labor Day through early December.
WHICH 2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL SLEEPER SHOULD YOU SNATCH IN YOUR DRAFT? AND WHICH WR1 CANDIDATE CAN YOU WAIT ON UNTIL LATE? JOIN SPORTSLINE NOW TO GET 2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL CHEAT SHEETS FROM THE MODEL THAT WAS ALL OVER DERRICK HENRY'S HUGE SEASON, AND FIND OUT.