NFL offseason thread

A friend who runs a software company years ago naively tried to cold-bid on the NFL's schedule-making. A PhD in math from Hopkins, he told me you had to have major money and major connections to even get in the door.

 

You need real political skills as well as technical ones to create the NFL schedule as you are balancing the interests of the most powerful mass media entities in the country as well as the interests of 32 psychopathic zillionaires.

 

Imagine how hard it was back in the day when half the league shared stadiums with baseball teams. I'm sure that was fun.

 

In the last days of the AFL and the first merger year (1970), the Patriots didn't even HAVE a home stadium. They played at whatever college would let them use their field. Harvard, most of the time.

 

I have a souvenir coin still in its wrapper with the Boston Patriots schedule, a giveaway from a Texaco gas station.

 

In 1968 a conflict with the Red Sox meant Fenway wasn’t available for the Pats home opener. So they decamped to Birmingham to face Joe Willie Namath’s Jets.

1968 Boston Patriots vs. New York Jets football game - Bhamwiki

 

Is this how the schedule is going to be rolled out, one week at a time? You would think it's a pronouncement from Olympus.

 

Holy crap I'd never heard about that before.

Imagine seeing the Patriots v. Jets and knowing their payrolls lagged behind the home team's.

 

Just playing Joe Willie in Birmingham - wonder what the gate split was.

 

Not much — attendance was just over 29,000.

 

I was watching a This Week In Pro Football from like 1974. The Raiders played at Cal because of an A's conflict.