In what is the biggest fait accompli in the history of the NFL, owners will vote on whether to expand the playoffs to 14 teams next week. This will obviously be done through a conference call or digital means since the NFL — much like every other major company in the United States — is currently essentially shutdown and practicing social distancing. There’s no way they will get a bunch of owners — many of whom are in the demographic most affected by Covid-19 — in one room at one time.
Once the owners vote in the expanded playoff system, there will be other things they need to address. They need to decide how they will structure the first weekend of playoffs, although that seems to have an easy answer where they put three games on Saturday and three games on Sunday. Maybe they try and add an extra day, but logistics will be very difficult if they choose to go that route.
The next major question to answer will be how to open up the television rights. The league will want to get their new TV deals done now, but there are some business issues since the economy has slowed down since novel coronavirus became an issue in the U.S.. If content distributors don’t want to sign the long-term deals the NFL is interested in, then there must be a bridge from this season to the next season when new deals will be agreed upon. That means the league could find itself selling a two-game playoff package — which is fine, people will still pay.
Voting isn’t the final step. There are a lot of moving parts here and that will have to be discussed even though it’s pretty obvious that the league will choose to expand the playoffs. There’s no reason not to and possibly billions of reasons to do so.