NFL Reportedly Considering Saturday Games If College Football Season Gets Canceled

Could we see NFL games being played on Saturday’s this year? It’s very possible as the league is considering having games played every Saturday if the college football season is canceled. According to the New York Post, the NFL has had preliminary discussions about playing Saturday games throughout the year. The schedule is expected to be released on May 9, and the idea is for a game to be moved to Saturday whenever the league sees fit. In a way, it’s schedule flexing but for Saturday instead of Sunday.

“The NFL will only consider the move if there is no college football,” Andrew Marchand of the New York Post wrote. “It is still unclear if college football will be played this fall because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The college game has more uncontrollable variables than the NFL starting with the fact that the players aren’t true professionals. If students aren’t on campus in the fall, it is hard to see how football players could be asked to compete. Crowd attendance is also more important for the majority of college programs’ bottom lines than it is to the NFL.”

Saturday is an option, but the full-season plan will stay mostly the same with Sunday games along with one game on Monday and Thursday night. Having games on Saturday would create an open TV window for the league. Saturday games have been played before but only when the college football season is over.

This is one of the many things the NFL is looking at for the 2020 season. It’s also possible the season could be delayed, and if that happens, the season the Super Bowl could be pushed back as late as Feb. 28. That would also mean the Pro Bowl would be canceled.

“Two weeks of early-season games could be shifted wholesale to the end of the season,” John Ourand and Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal wrote. “A third week would feature teams only playing opponents with the same bye week, so that week could be cut and byes eliminated league-wide. These contingency-laden plans also include cutting the weekend between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, where the Pro Bowl is typically played, to allow another week to be lost to delays. Under such a plan, the Pro Bowl would not be played.”