1. John Ourand of Sports Business Journal dropped some newsworthy nuggets Monday morning about the NFL’s 2022 television schedule.
According to Ourand, as of now, it looks like Bills at Rams will open the season on Thursday night in Week 1.
Ourand also reports that with Christmas Day falling on a Sunday this year, the NFL will move most of its normal slate of games to Saturday. However, NBC will still air a Sunday Night Football game on Christmas Day, and Fox and CBS both want to air a Christmas Day game as well.
Browns at Packers was a ratings smash on Christmas Day in 2021, so naturally the networks want more.
However, the item in Ourand’s report that intrigued me more than anything was this:
“Amazon has made a little bit of noise about scheduling a game on Black Friday. A Black Friday game would complement Amazon’s e-commerce business, and it would be similar to its Premier League strategy in Britain, where it carries all of the league’s Boxing Day games. But this store may be closed; the NFL has been lukewarm to this idea.”
THIS WAS MY IDEA!
I have been tweeting about this since 2018 and even discussed it on the SI MEDIA PODCAST this past November.
Granted, I said the Black Friday game should be a 9:30 London game, but I’ll take it anywhere, anytime.
I’ve never been prouder to be an Amazon subscriber than I am right now. Black Friday is a perfect day for a stand-alone NFL game. You’re tired, full and hungover from the day before. You want to avoid stores at all costs. Most people have off from work. It is an absolute no-brainer.
Hopefully, someone at Amazon can convince Roger Goodell to wake up and see the light.
2. CBS's Andrew Catalon did an excellent job forecasting the scrum that took place at the Michigan-Wisconsin game Sunday night. As soon as the game ended, the play-by-play man was focused on the interaction between Wolverines coach Juwan Howard and Wisconsin coach Greg Gard.
"Juwan Howard not going over immediately to shake hands," said Catalon right after the closing buzzer. He then added, "Interesting finish here." He wasn't kidding.
As the tension mounted, Catalon said, "Howard and Gard are NOT happy right now," and then all hell broke loose with Howard swatting at Gard.
"Juwan Howard just threw a right hand and now we have a scrum. We have a scrum in Madison," yelled Catalon, who also continually added the context that this all happened because of late timeouts called by Wisconsin in a blowout win.
3. A few years ago, it was Draymond Green unable to control his laughter at Fergie's ridiculous version of the national anthem at the NBA All-Star Game.
On Sunday, it was LeBron trying to hold back the giggles at Macy Gray's strange performance of the anthem.
LeBron did a slightly better job at controlling himself, but not by much.
4. "He put a bunch of old a-- geezers together." That was Charles Barkley using the All-Star Game as an opportunity to mock Lakers GM Rob Pelinka.
5. The latest SI Media Podcast features New York Post sports media columnist Andrew Marchand joining me for a discussion on a variety of topics. Items covered during the podcast include NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl LVI, the futures of Al Michaels and Troy Aikman, Rams coach Sean McVay possibly getting into broadcasting, whether Tom Brady will try to get into broadcasting, Chris Russo and Stephen A. Smith on First Take, ESPN's deal with the ManningCast and much more.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
