| The National Football League runs the tightest of tight ships, with one exception. The outlier is the window of time each year leading up to days like today, when an information dump preceded by weeks of leaks somehow turns into one of the most anticipated events of the football year. In no other sport does something as apparently routine as the upcoming season’s schedule release get greeted with such spit-balling and cause for analysis. Yet that’s what will happen on Thursday, as all 272 regular-season games get punched in and released for public scrutiny. No other league treats the process with such a sense of ceremony, and for good reason. Good luck attempting to generate can’t-miss fever for, say, the Red Sox/Yankees dates, when they’re going to play each other 18 times across the year. And therein lies the impetus for why the NFL can legitimately promote its schedule release as a significant television event. Its product remains rare, permanently in short supply, always keeping the viewer wanting more. To that end, the “leaks” of info regarding games on the schedule are no accident either, a carefully formulated plan to tease and hype a season that is still four months away from seeing its first action. Thanks to a combination of official statements and sourced rumors, we can pencil in more than 30 of the 2022 games already, perhaps highlighted by an absolute blockbuster in Week 10. The Dallas Cowboys will visit Lambeau Field to take on the Green Bay Packers, with plenty of Mike McCarthy-themed intrigue to add to the mix. There will also be a trio of Christmas Day games, meaning we’re not just stuck with a festive diet of the Detroit Lions this time around. “The NFL has turned Schedule Release Day into an art, dangling the strings of anticipation at just the right time — when post-draft interest is waning and before OTAs start — to ensure its yearlong grip on the typical American sports fan’s attention,” wrote The Athletic’s David Lombardi. It would be manifestly wrong to say that this is the most beloved of the NFL’s trove of events that don’t directly spawn football game action. The draft and the combine are more fondly regarded and less prone to attract snark. People like to complain about the fuss that is made about the schedule release, sometimes with a sense of too-cool-for-school aloofness. And then like clockwork, those same folks get drawn into the chatter and start parsing the schedule of various teams and firing off tweets before they realize what is going on. It’s that kind of deal. It’s something you might like – and wish that you didn’t. But if we are looking for an explanation as to why the schedule release matters, it’s because this is when it all starts to feel real. The 2022 season transforms from being an idea, into an actual, planned, mapped out thing. This is something that doesn’t get talked about a lot, but football’s most ardent fans are compulsive planners. They like to know what is happening, and when. It’s “just” football, and watching it is “just” leisure, but this is a country that takes its leisure seriously. The schedule release gets all that kickstarted. There are tailgates to plan, backyard barbecues to arrange, personal calendars to update. In some cases, apparently, wedding dates don’t get booked in until the schedule is formalized. Years ago, I happened to sit next to the manager of a Philadelphia-area luxury hotel on a flight. He told me that they’d always get a handful more calls than normal, about weddings, the day after the schedule came out. With travel now a thing again, that comes into it, too. Many fans plan on one road trip per year. Since the Raiders moved to Las Vegas, the combo of a weekend in Sin City and seeing your team go up against the silver-and-black, is an irresistible package for many. If we’re being honest, some of the hoopla around the release is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. Because of the reality that we have no way of knowing who will be good in November and December, some slated games are going to seem a lot bigger now than they turn out to be. The flip side also applies. Jaguars-Jets might currently seem like one to miss, but if Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson suddenly burst into life in Year 2, who knows? Far stranger things have happened. But the real sorcery is that the schedule release makes the games feel actual, which is more than enough to convince us that the season isn’t still a long way away, when, of course, it is. It is still – get this – 18 weeks away, the precise length of the season. In that sense, you figure, we’re happy to buy into the illusion. |
