Eagles-Seahawks schedule flex insults NFL fans and plays a dangerous game

The NFL is nothing but a beggar in a Brooks Brothers suit. It has all the money it will ever need, all the money in the world, all the money that the most popular institution in American sports — in American culture — could hope to have. But it needs more. More money. More attention. More of your precious time. More. More. More. And it is happy to extract more from the man or woman on the street, from pro football’s most passionate and devoted fans, from the people who already are giving as much as they can.

So the Eagles and Seahawks, who were supposed to play on Sunday, Dec. 17, at Lumen Field in Seattle, will now play on Monday, Dec. 18. They will play on Monday Night Football because the NFL implemented a flexible-scheduling policy this season that allows it to move a Sunday game to Monday with just 12 days’ notice. Because the television and streaming audiences will be bigger on ESPN and ABC than on a regional network telecast. Because God forbid the gamblers and fantasy-football junkies endure Chiefs-Patriots in a prime-time slot instead of a game more relevant and consequential to the playoff picture.

Mostly, though, the league made this change because it can, because this is how the league and its franchise owners — and the Eagles’ Jeffrey Lurie is a guilty party here, too — and its broadcasting partners want things to be, and they are willing to slap the faces of fans and ticket holders for the sake of placating … themselves.

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This is an awful move by the NFL. You don’t change the day of a game this late in the season, especially one involving two teams on opposite coasts. It is more than arrogant. It is Gekko-like in its avarice. It is a bait-and-switch scheme that takes advantage of too many people without the power or resources to adjust their plans and their lives, to accommodate the compulsion of 31 billionaires to make a few extra bucks.

Think this through: The NFL released its 2023 regular-season schedule in mid-May. Even with the knowledge that the league might — might — shift the day and time of Eagles-Seahawks, what are fans who want to attend that game supposed to do? Do they pay more to book round-trip flights and reserve hotel rooms from Saturday to Tuesday on the off-chance that the NFL moves the game? Do they wait to see if the league flexes it before they make arrangements at all?

Either way, they’re screwed. Either they’re paying more to add hotel nights and reschedule their flights, or they’re paying through the nose to set up their entire last-minute itinerary now. Sorry, but travel insurance doesn’t cover the cost of the NFL’s unmitigated greed.

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Nobody wants to see Chiefs-Patriots isn’t a good enough reason to give the middle finger to thousands of people, and it is thousands of people — Eagles fans and Seahawks fans — who will be inconvenienced here, and inconvenienced is the best-case scenario. Lumen Field’s capacity is 68,740. If 5% of a sellout’s attendees have work- or family-related obligations on Monday nights or have to cancel their cross-country trips altogether, that’s 3,400 people. That’s not a handful. That’s not insignificant. But those are the people — the 9-to-5ers, the moms and dads who can’t miss basketball practice or a parent-teacher conference, the everyday fans — whom the NFL is happy to sacrifice at the altars of ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos.

Yes, remember: Flexing games from Sundays to Monday nights is, as far as the league’s owners are concerned, a half-measure. The majority of them sought similar power and discretion to flex games from Sundays to Thursdays, a cheap maneuver to goose viewership for Amazon that features the pesky little drawback of putting players at greater risk for injury. That measure wasn’t passed. But the vote was close, and the “compromise” was that the league made it possible for a team to play two Thursday nights in one season, and Lurie is clearly among the owners who don’t mind breaking those eggs (or legs, or brains) to make a tastier soufflé.

“It’s a big jump to have an NFL package on streaming,” Lurie told reporters last spring at the owners’ meetings in Phoenix. “We know we’re headed toward a very digital universe. More and more people are watching games through streaming. We know that that’s where it’s all headed. So there’s an attempt at wanting to make the Thursday night package even more attractive. There are ways of doing that. We could allow teams to be on there more than once and not require every team to have to be on there, so you can create some matchups in May when you’re doing the schedule and try to have a somewhat better series of matchups for Amazon and for the ratings and for the fans.”

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Not all the fans. Not the ones who don’t have bottomless pockets but still care enough to adjust their lives and shell out the cash to support their teams, only to have the NFL tell them, Give us more, you peons. The league is putting games on Christmas afternoon and shifting the days and times of games after a season’s midpoint. It is making the schedule longer and more grueling, and it is flirting with holding its conference-championship games at neutral sites. It is daring its players to put their health first and say enough. It is daring its fans to throw up their hands in frustration and walk away. It is telling them, We don’t give a damn how much you paid. We don’t give a damn whether you show up or not. We don’t give a damn about you, period.

This isn’t a new game that the NFL is playing, but even as popular as pro football is, it’s still a dangerous one. Even if these repeated power grabs don’t damage the league now, there’s always peril for any institution or system in assuming that it’s untouchable, that it’s immune from the kind of upheaval that can cause it to crumble. Sounds reactionary, I know. Sounds crazy. It’s not. Politics, media, education, economics, industry: Sometimes there’s no way to know when a tipping point is ahead. Sometimes there’s no way to know when the people who should matter most to you will finally get fed up with being told that they don’t.

The Eagles will host the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.