Good evening everyone, and welcome to Day 2 of [DFO] Hate Week, brought to you tonight by the number 18

I write this post as a follower of an 18-game football league. As The Maestro is better able to explain, the CFL has had an 18-game schedule since 1986. 

This results in uneven divisional scheduling, as a nine-team league makes this result in having to play certain teams an odd number of times. Since the CFL has four teams in the East division and the five teams in the West division, the schedule isn’t even for every team. Clubs in the West play their division foes nine times, compared to only five matchups from the East (one team they face twice). The East squads play eight games against their division, while facing the West division six times (one team they face twice). Factor in three bye weeks (the third is due to the odd number of teams), and you’ve got a 20-week regular season. The number of preseason games has been cut down to two, which is good for the league because no one wants to pay for those. This is what the NFL is likely aiming for.

What will this mean?

The August “month” of preseason will be cut down to two games – one home & one away. This is preferable for the players because it’s less wear & tear, and means they get more “game pay”. It’s preferable for the owners, because it means they can charge more money for more “regular season” games, because they will now get nine each, and most teams have variable pricing mechanisms which enable them to charge more for more valuable games. 

I know this from my Seahawks packages – the price of preseason games is now around $40/game for where I sit, and the average NFC West ticket is $165. In 2026, the home opponents will be: 

It’s a scalper’s dream, and thus likely to be the most expensive season ever.

Unless they start Labor Day weekend, even a 20-week, two bye season will take the regular season into the third week of January. This doesn’t confront Roger Goodell at all because all he sees are those multiple broadcast revenue streams.

Why is this a bad idea? It’s not; in fact, it’s a fantastic idea if you consider the primary beneficiaries – the bank accounts of the 31 owners (and the “charitable trust” that runs the Packers), who stand to generate even more revenue from that extra home game ticket sales, concessions, and media rights deals. It is a brilliant, disingenuous plan disguised as progress.

The league’s main justification is simple: “More football is better football.” Having watched a Week 18 Browns-Bengals game with my own fucking eyes, this is demonstrably false and would also be laughable if it wasn’t morbidly fascinating. The NFL is already an injury war zone. Adding a game is not just adding 60 minutes of action; it’s adding another 60 minutes of high-impact collisions that shorten careers and increase injury risks.

But how will they accomplish this, without raising suspicion?

Well, get ready for more international games, which at this point seems likely to model the dreaded “neutral site” games the NHL endured between 1992-94. Holding more games in more places on more days seems like a recipe for watering down the product, but what do I know? I mean, look at this 2026 bullshit:

These moves are designed to make the NFL an even more “global” sport, which is code for “more money from foreign markets”. I don’t see how, though – they’ve just announced it’s Browns vs. Saints in Paris, which,

This is going to do more to worsen EU relations than any Trump tariff ever could. I can hear the “Zut alors!” already.

For the actual fans who might want to, you know, attend every home game, this is a delightful kick to the balls.

But Roger ain’t care because he’s already got your money.

The End Game

There are different ways to absorb this, but none of them are very good. For Roger Goodell, it’s what people have been clamoring for since the Super Bowl became a global event – the holiday weekend Super Bowl! 

The crowning achievement of the 18-game schedule will be consistently having the Super Bowl land on Presidents’ Day weekend, giving most of America a built-in holiday the next day. Every year, the same people bitch online about having to work the day after The Big Game©®™. If only there were a way to allow them both the right to a hangover and (where practiced) a paid day-off to recover from such illness? In King Roger’s mind, the only way to achieve this three-day weekend is by forcing players to endure an extra week of physical trauma. It’s a small price to pay for the average fan’s convenience, right?

His Majesty even brought it up during his annual “State of the League” press conference Monday night. Goodell echoed a bunch of the stuff I said up-top, including whether “a second bye week was needed” and making sure rosters would reflect this increased workload – specifically, the possible “negative impact on player safety and competitiveness”. Unmentioned during his ramblings (or sycophantic reports I found online) was whether the salary cap would be increased in accordance with that. But not saying something about a thought they’re not having is his way of putting the topic out there for people to talk about while they’re not directly talking about it:

“We have not had any formal discussions about it and frankly very little of any informal conversations,” Goodell said at his Super Bowl LX news conference. “It is not a given that we will do that. It’s not something we assume will happen. It’s something we want to talk about with the union leadership.”

The players, understandably, are not fans of this emergent though, but I don’t know what they can do about it. Toothless NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell noted from his cuck chair, “No one wants to play an 18th game. No one“. But the players’ opinion, like player health or the affordability of attending a game for the blue-collar fan, is a minor detail in the grand, inevitable march toward more, more, and even more revenue. What they’ll likely get out of it will be extra roster spots (more employment), larger practice squads, and an extra percentage or two of that increased league revenue.

In the end, what does this mean for the League?

What does it mean for the players?

What does it mean for the fans? Well, likely a personal “thank you” from Roger Goodell in the form of

So, hail to the 18-game season. It’s perfectly bad for all the right, capitalistic reasons. Enjoy the extra week of football, the increased injuries, and the joy of supporting your team at a time you don’t want in an international stadium you can’t visit once a year.

It’s a fan’s dream come true!

Tonight’s sports:

• NFL:
  • some bastard version of the Pro Bowl – 8:00pm | ESPN / TSN
•  NHL:
  • Leafs at Oilers – 8:30pm | Sportsnet
• NBA:
  • Lakers at Nets – 7:30pm | Sportsnet1
  • Celtics vs Nuggets – 8:00pm | Peacock
  • Sixers at Warriors – 10:00pm | Sportsnet1
  • Suns vs Blazers – 10:00pm | Peacock
• NCAA:
  • Men’s:
    • Mississippi vs Tennessee – 7:00pm | ESPN2 / TSN2
    • NC State vs SMU – 9:00pm | ESPN2 / TSN2

Two days to go until the Olympics, and the hilarious unpreparedness of the Italians. Even in darkness, there can be light.