By Max McAuliff, Staff Writer
Welcome to a 17-game NFL regular season. NFL owners voted Tuesday to expand the NFL regular season from 16 games to 17. This decision has been expected for months and doesn’t come as a surprise to most people in the league.
While a 17-game season isn’t surprising, it certainly has a lot of players disgruntled. Alvin Kamara and Cameron Jordan took to social media to air their grievances this past weekend when it became inevitable that the league would adopt an additional matchup.
The expansion of the regular season is the first expansion for the NFL since the 1978 season when the league transitioned from 14 to 16 games.
Adding a 17th game to the regular season might sound easy, but there are both pros and cons that come with the decision.
The biggest con that comes with adding a 17th game to the NFL schedule is the physical toll the additional game will have on playing 20 games between the regular season and preseason so not a whole lot has changed.
Arguably the best thing to come out of this for the players is the potential for them to make more money. There’s a lot of confusing financial terminology involved that is hard to understand but the important thing is if NFL revenue increases then player revenue can as well.
The bottom line is this: change is inevitable. Evolution is a necessary component in all aspects of life. Organizations or people that refuse to evolve are unlikely to be successful in whatever they hope to achieve.
In this case, however, a 17th game NFL season is not justifiable. The pros do not outweigh the cons and players’ careers are being put on the line. By the end of the season, injuries have piled up and players scramble to try and get healthy before playoffs. Adding the 17th game to the season only increases players’ chances of injury.
Another aspect of the decision to add a 17th game, that isn’t necessarily a pro or a con, is the possibility of single season records being broken. This is both a good and bad thing.
Seeing a player break a record is exhilarating and part of the reason why fans love watching the game.
However, having an extra game gives somewhat of an unfair advantage over players who only played 16 games per season. Running back Eric Dickerson shouldn’t lose his record as the single-season rushing leader because someone else was able to play 17 games.
While there are glaring cons to adding an additional game, the pros can’t be ignored either. One positive is that the number of preseason games will be cut down from four preseason games to three.
This is good because it cuts the number of meaningless games down to try and prevent injuries in the preseason.
A 17-game season will be the new normal and fans better buckle up.
mcaulimr18@bonaventure.edu
