The NFL is a SUNDAY Sport

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00:00Um, but we've talked about the NFL and how there's so much going on, it seems, and how I have

00:11said this for two years now that I feel like the NFL will stale itself out.

00:15And what I mean by that is it will just give you too much to where you're just, I'm done.

00:18I'm full, right?

00:19Think of yourself, um, on Thanksgiving dinner and you've eaten so much and then you see like a Pizza Hut

00:26commercial, like change the channel.

00:27I can't look at food. I'm going to be sick, right? You know that feeling. And I feel like the

00:31NFL is headed that way. Now they're not there yet, but obviously you want to try to forecast it as

00:35best you can.

00:37And this was Jason Kelsey with where football is when it comes to watching it on television in the days

00:42of the week.

00:43I don't think we're there yet. Sunday is the day of football, right? Outside of going to church in the

00:50morning, if you're still religious and you do that, Sunday is like where so many games happen.

00:57And that's what you grow up in. You gear your entire week around watching football on Sunday. Yeah. It's an

01:03institution at this point, the NFL playing games on Sunday with every day that we keep adding in there, we're

01:08getting away from that just a little bit.

01:10And I worry that I think the game got big. One of the reasons it got so popular and big

01:17was because all of the game, it was an event. Sunday is the NFL and everybody set their week apart

01:23to tune into their games that were happening on Sunday.

01:25And you're watching kind of all of them now take place across the, I mean, Sunday ticket, right? I worry

01:30that we're getting away from that just a little bit by, by building too many of this.

01:37And what he's meaning is that you now have games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Saturday late in

01:43the season too. You know, it's crazy.

01:45It's almost too much, right? Like you can go to a buffet and see that there is a ton of

01:50options to eat. You don't have to eat everything.

01:52You can find what you like. And I think with the NFL and what they're doing is they're just, they're

01:58trying to do too much with a product that's already given us enough.

02:01If that makes any sort of sense, but like, he's not wrong about how Sundays were. I don't hate Sunday,

02:08Monday, Thursday. I really don't.

02:09No, I don't hate that either. I think that's fine. That's good balance. That's how it should be.

02:14But now you're going to start playing games on Wednesday, but they're going to be in Australia.

02:18Then you're going to play a game on Thursday and it's going to be in Seattle.

02:21And then you're going to play a game on Friday and it's going to be here.

02:24And then you're like, all right. So we went from Australia to Seattle, to Brazil, to Sunday, to Monday.

02:32And to me, I think the problem with the NFL is that no one's really asking for this.

02:39The NFL is just really flexing its own product, which it can, because it sits at the top of the

02:44sports mountain.

02:44And it's just like, you won't complain about it. So we're just going to do it.

02:49And now you're hearing one of maybe the bigger voices of the NFL, which is Jason Kelsey.

02:54I don't know how many you would say that are bigger than his when it comes to a vocal voice.

02:58Maybe you could throw the insiders up there with Rapport and Schefter because they just give you the news.

03:03But I feel like from a fan's perspective, that to me is why new heights works so well,

03:08because they are very relatable when it comes to the content that they present.

03:13And this is something where I think if it's your team, you kind of hate it even more.

03:19And you know how I feel about Christmas Day games. I know that's not going anywhere.

03:23I understand that some people like the Fesco household, they've made it a tradition.

03:27And God bless them for doing that, because that's something that that family is getting older.

03:32They're not going to be together much longer, but they've found some sort of common denominator.

03:36That is Christmas night football that makes it work for them.

03:38It may not work for everybody else, but you're not them. They're not you.

03:40When it comes to the NFL, we're all of it, right? Like we're all the NFL.

03:44And now it's like, man, you think about the first two Chiefs games, Sunday night football,

03:48Monday night football, or vice versa, I should say, Monday night football, then Sunday night football.

03:52And it's like, now you're going to go through different algorithms that are going to make you annoyed,

03:57where it's like, well, now they no longer play at noon.

04:00Now I have to wait all day Sunday night.

04:01They have to wait all day Monday night.

04:03Plus all these other games are happening.

04:04I can't keep up with this.

04:06And I think what it's doing is that it's hurting itself interiorly, and it's going to eventually implode from the

04:11inside

04:12to where it's going to be like what Jason Kelsey said.

04:14We've lost what got us here, which is building your weekend around.

04:18Hey, what are you doing this weekend?

04:19Well, Friday's happy hour at the sand trap Saturday's yard work and hang out with the family and soccer and

04:24whatever Sunday football.

04:26Now it's like, well, the Chiefs played on Tuesday.

04:28So Sunday, I guess I'll watch it, but I'm not as engaged with it as I was in the past.

04:33And I think that's the problem is the NFL is killing itself from the inside out.

04:36Well, it is.

04:37I mean, you know what Mark Cuban said, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

04:40And hearing one of the more prominent voices say something like this is different than us saying it or the

04:46fans saying it.

04:47Because when you hear it from Jason Kelsey, who I do think is one of the prominent voices in the

04:51NFL at this point in time,

04:52him and Pat McAfee, like you can say what you want about them,

04:56but they are the most prominent voices right now that I think this league has from an opinion standpoint.

05:01And when he's saying it to me, it's also a kind of a, you know, a direct, you know, connection,

05:09if you will,

05:09to a lot of the players that are still in the game today, because Jason just recently played.

05:13And oh, by the way, his brother is still playing right now.

05:16So this isn't just Jason Kelsey's opinion on this subject.

05:19This is Jason Kelsey's opinion after talking to a lot of people about this, right?

05:24And having the conversations and finding out what do the players like?

05:27What did I like as a player and really kind of putting this into perspective?

05:32Because I think, you know, you kind of do need to get a hold on it.

05:36The one thing we say about baseball, there's too many games.

05:38What do we say about the NBA?

05:39There's too many regular season games.

05:41Do people want to see less of the regular season, more of the postseason?

05:45They want games that matter.

05:46And Sunday's was always that way to get kind of people captivated.

05:52You owned the day.

05:53And by not owning Sunday anymore, you don't really own any other day of the week.

05:59Maybe you get a little on a Tuesday, a little on a Wednesday, a little on a Friday, a little

06:02here.

06:02But Sunday, you knew everybody was going to be there and attend your party.

06:08Now there's half the country that doesn't have to attend your party on Sunday because they played earlier,

06:12kind of going over the games, and he's like, there's nothing in October and November really at home, right?

06:17That's the other thing is like they have front-loaded and back-loaded the home games.

06:22The best months of the year, we don't have games at Arrowhead.

06:25And that's been going on since Andy's been here because he likes the back end,

06:28having those games at home and for the postseason.

06:31And I understand all that.

06:32But for the last decade, we're worried about playing on Wednesdays and Thursdays and Tuesdays and Sundays.

06:37We totally forgot we've had October and early November basically taken away from us as a fan base in this

06:42town, you know?

06:44Yeah, there's a podcast that I listen to.

06:46I wish we would have came up with this idea.

06:47They did a draft this weekend of Don't Divorce Your Wife draft,

06:50and we're drafting the holiday games, whether to skip and what to watch.

06:56Yeah, sure.

06:56And because that's literally where it's at now.

06:58And because if you want to, like, have a family or be a father or be a friend or just

07:02be a human being,

07:03like, that's what it's going to take.

07:04It's going to take, like, being like, all right, I'm going to set aside this day.

07:07I'm going to watch this game at these two days.

07:09Like, I'm going to not do that.

07:10Like, I'm going to value my family because it's on every day.

07:14And that's the situation that every other sport is in.

07:16That was the one unique thing about the NFL.

07:19They didn't have that problem.

07:21NBA, baseball, hockey, all these sports have so many games.

07:24We're doing that constantly.

07:25Yeah, Celtics play tonight.

07:26I'm not going to watch because I've got 40 other games.

07:28The NFL is now putting themselves in that situation.

07:30Yeah, they are.

07:31And Sunday was such an event, too, guys, like, back in the day.

07:34I remember walking into Arrowhead in the early days that I was doing this job,

07:37and Vermeel was the coach, and Carl Peterson was there.

07:40And I've always shared this story, but, like, you walked in,

07:43and you felt like if you weren't there on Sundays, there was FOMO, man.

07:47You wanted to be at Arrowhead.

07:48You needed to be there.

07:49It was that Sunday feel, that Sunday vibe.

07:52And that was something that they had because it was one day a week.

07:55If you start giving somebody something all the time, it's just not as special anymore, right?

08:01Like, say you like fillets or whatever.

08:03You eat fillet for three weeks in a row.

08:04You're finally like, all right, I've had enough of this.

08:06I don't need it anymore.

08:07Even though I like it, I can pass for a couple of days.

08:09I've had my fill.

08:10You always want to leave people wanting more.

08:13And I think by having, as Dusty talked about, the Thursday, Sunday, Monday, you left your fans wanting more because

08:18it was one game on a Thursday.

08:19It was one game on a Monday, and everything else was on Sunday.

08:22You left your fans wanting more.

08:24And Tuesday rolled around, and we couldn't wait to get to next week.

08:27And we don't really have that anymore.

08:28And I love the fact that Jason Kelsey is out here telling everybody how he feels because I think he's

08:34right about it.

08:35And I think a good majority of the fans, like a vast majority of the fans, would probably want it

08:40back to the old days where we don't have a football game on every single night of the week.

08:45Yeah, I always looked at the football week as, like, the week of Christmas, right?

08:48Like, Thursday night was kind of Christmas Eve.

08:50Sometimes your family lets you open up one gift.

08:52You go to the service.

08:53You sing Silent Night.

08:54You kind of get into the vibe of it.

08:55Then you got to, you know, whatever.

08:57And then Sunday was, like, the big day.

08:59Sunday was, like, all right, noon, 11 o'clock.

09:01I've got Terry Bradshaw on my TV talking to Howie Long about I don't know what, but I know at

09:06noon the games are going to start.

09:07And then Monday was kind of like, oh, we still got to go over to Grandma and Grandpa's house and

09:11do Christmas over there on Monday.

09:12You got one game left.

09:13Yeah, you got one game left.

09:14And you could just kind of, like, fade away into the night.

09:16It was never really a great game.

09:17We were starting to compare Thursday night versus Monday night or Sunday night versus Monday night.

09:21But, again, as I can speak this more, we're not talking about this year.

09:26We're talking about the future of the NFL and what it can do because somebody says, you know that they're

09:30still going to have high ratings this year and no one will care.

09:32Again, we're not talking about this year.

09:34And, obviously, we're not talking to the J. Binkley's or the football hardos.

09:37They're like, football always dominates.

09:38It's never going anywhere.

09:40Fine, but don't say I didn't tell you so in 2026 that when we get to a point where it's

09:45like, now there's football every day of the week, it's like, yeah, I'm good.

09:47It's not as special.

09:49It just isn't.

09:50It's just not as special.

09:51And that's the narrative is the specialness of what the game used to be and where it's at now because

09:56it's just an over an abundance of what it could be.

09:58We get back into Bob's bonehead of the week, plus Josh Vernier joins us in about 20 minutes.

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