This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Charles Curtis.
Ugh. Despite pretty much everyone — including myself, back in March — declaring how bad the idea of flexed Thursday Night Football games, it’s happening.
The details, first: Twenty-four of the 32 owners passed it, as a trial for 2023. The window for changing games from Sunday afternoon to Thursday night is Weeks 13 to 17. A flexed game decision has to be made up to 28 days before the contest, which is meant to be a nice thing for the teams involved.
But it’s not. The whole thing stinks.
It stinks for the players, who might have already played a Thursday game and who are presumably in contention for a playoff spot if they’re getting flexed. As we’ve heard from players, The recovery time between Sunday and Thursday isn’t enough, and it could lead to more injuries.
It stinks for coaches, who lose time to prepare their teams.
It stinks for the fans who have tickets and maybe travel plans to that Sunday game. The quotes about that angle just prove the priority is on television.
“Every owner in that room lives and breathes sensitivity to those fans,” Jerry Jones said, via CBS. “But only 7% of our fans have ever been inside a stadium. Seven. Percent. So you’ve got a lot of fans — a huge majority of the fans that are out there — that this is good for them.”
Gross.
And, speaking of which, yeah, it stinks for owners! What if your team is contending and loses that game due to the shortened week? What if you lose a key player to injury, a worry for any game in the NFL, but a BIGGER concern in a short week? The thing you voted for could backfire spectacularly.
It all stinks.
Quick Hits: LeBron thinking about retirement? … More Michael Block awesomeness … and more.
— After LeBron got LeSwept, his quotes indicated he was thinking about his future, and a report says he’s contemplating retirement.
— Michael Block’s reaction to being invited to the Charles Schwab Challenge is the best.
— The NFL’s new emergency backup QB rule is like the NHL’s goalie rule but much less fun.
— Max Muncy said that the Cardinals “bullied” umps into make bad calls.
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