Football has always had problems, but from a fan experience perspective, it was basically the perfect setup for a long, long time. The sport simply owned Sunday afternoons, and in many ways, Monday night, not just because it was popular, but because it was so well engineered. No baseball/basketball/hockey-style fatigue or regular season grind, everything happening at once, everything important all the time. The league printed money, dominated TV and culture, and set whatever terms it wanted in everything it did.

But… it wasn’t enough. And it never will be. Now, football is on too much. Thursday night games suck. There are random bad games in Europe at odd hours. The 16 game schedule is now 17 games, with a corresponding increase in injuries that make the results a little less about skill, and a little more about depth and attrition. Instead of just being “on”, games are gated behind stupid services like Peacock, and Amazon Prime. Things are basically the same, just a little bit worse every year.

People can feel it. Football is still a dominant money machine, but almost no one is a fan of the direction the league is moving. And even that’s not enough, because nothing is enough. Now the owners want 18 games, consequences be damned.

“I want to tell you guys that we’re going to push like the dickens now to make international [games] more important with us,” Kraft told the “Zolak & Bertrand” show. “Every team will go 18 [regular-season games] and two [preseason games] and eliminate one of the preseason games, and every team every year will play one game overseas.”

I gotta tell you, I hate that everything is like this. We sometimes reprimand my intense, ambitious daughter for constantly pushing the envelope in an attempt to get the most out of things, or move them in the direction she wants. “Push, push, push”, my wife will say, to remind her how exhausting it is to have even wonderful things stretched and exploited and distorted until they become frustrating facsimiles of themselves.

For our sake, we hope she reigns it in as she grows up, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think it’s a quality that will keep her from being successful. Maybe she’ll own an NFL team.