thursdaynight Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ranking the major sports networks from most elitist to Fox Sports
Prestige and journalism shouldn’t go hand-in-hand together. Sure, there are outlets with enough history and money to have ethics departments, fact-checkers, and paying subscribers, but the omnipresent tier — the ones controlling the rights to the big sports — are cost-cutting corporate slugs like th...
Get ready for another streaming-only NFL playoff game
Amazon is going to pay $150 million for the exclusive right to broadcast an NFL playoff game next season....
Kirk Herbstreit is going to need Secret Service for future visits to Athens, Ga.
Perhaps the juiciest story to come out of college football’s National Signing Day centered not on a recruit but an ESPN analyst. According to Dominic Raiola, father of top three QB recruit Dylan Raiola, Kirk Herbstriet reached out to him to endorse Dylan flipping from Georgia to Nebraska. ...
Saturday night’s NFL playoff streaming exclusive on Peacock isn’t the last we’ll see
NBC decided to broadcast Saturday’s Wild Card matchup featuring Kansas City and Miami exclusively on their streaming channel Peacock. This was the first time an NFL playoff game was televised in such a way and, if you’re like most folks, you weren’t too thrilled about it. It sucked for millions, but...
Amazon can't be happy with another episode of <i>Thursday Night Football</i> Comedy Hour
Thursday is upon us, which means the end of the work week is near. It also means another installment of Thursday Night Football featuring another lousy matchup. This one could be the trailer for a Hollywood comedy: Bad Backups. That’s the general consensus about tonight’s TNG game between the New En...
So 2 AFC North teams clubbed each other into oblivion after a short week? Shocker
The NFL is eventually going to win. People can push back on the product, and complain about Thursday Night Football and overseas football all they want, but in due time changes become normalized, and even the most inept schedule makers hit on a matchup. Enter the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Rav...
The NFL’s new flex rules are helpless against this season’s national TV slate
There are so many more interesting teams than the New York Jets and Giants, Denver Broncos, and Chicago Bears, but from now through Thanksgiving, NFL fans will be subjected to those franchises 13 times on national TV. It’s early, and there’s still time to course correct, yet after just two weeks, th...
NFL players should have a say in the new Thursday night flex games
Earlier this week, NFL owners voted to pass the approval of flexing for Thursday Night Football games — given that Thursday hasn’t produced the sexiest of slates to quench the appetites of starving fans. With the decision, fans will get a better game to watch and Amazon Prime gets a product to entic...
The NFL’s latest display of unapologetic capitalism is inspiring
Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you....
Don’t watch NFL playoff games exclusively broadcast on streaming services if you don’t want them there
The NFL has sold the rights to a playoff game to Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBC. ...
The expanded college football playoff schedule is going to test a lot of livers, waistbands, and relationships
Anyone who’s ever been to Las Vegas will tell you two nights is the perfect length for a trip, and proceed with caution after the 48-hour mark, or you’ll risk going full James Harden and slapping your buddy outside the club. Three days on the strip is excessive even for the most degenerate of addict...
NFL free agent/trade tracker: Aaron Rodgers to NY, Jalen Ramsey to Miami, and more
The NFL season started on Sept. 7, and through six weeks, there are no unbeaten teams remaining and plenty of parity....
Roger Goodell thinks refs are doing great
There’s a lot going on right now in sports, and if you sleep you might miss a landscape-altering trade. It’s easy to overlook important things, like the one time a year Roger Goodell lets the bothersome media ask him questions....
Slow start or bad investment? NFL’s TNF ratings drop after move to Amazon
Is it at all surprising that a more difficult entry point for Thursday Night Football games led to a drop in ratings? With the news that Amazon had to compensate advertisers because it didn’t meet the expected viewership numbers, it might be time to ask: How suitable is the streaming model for live ...
Week 17 NFL Powerless Ranking: Houston Texans remain at the bottom
It’s time to check in on the teams that can’t get out of their own way. The final two weeks of the 2022 NFL season are upon us, and it’s been a wild season filled with ups, downs, triumphs, and disappointment for all 32 squads. Now let’s get into the Week 17 powerless ranking....
Brady knows best: NFL chock full of bad football
Tom Brady is right....
If Amazon Prime can make Steelers-Browns watchable, world domination is within reach
Amazon wants its Thursday Night Football games to be a Monday or Sunday night event as bad as Cleveland wants a Super Bowl. Well, maybe not that bad, but still pretty bad. Tonight’s game between Pittsburgh and Cleveland features one AFC North team trying to find the heir to Ben Roethlisberger on the...
Have you heard the NFL schedules are out?
The NFL schedule release is the public-relations juggernaut that somehow is designed to be grand yet always comes off as vanilla. Leaks, intentional or not, happened throughout Thursday as the puzzle of the 18-week regular-season extravaganza came into focus. It’s a forced event on the league calend...
The NFL’s schedule release is dumb. Here’s how to revamp it
The NFL strives to become a year-round player in the professional sports attention economy. After years of being stuffed in their lockers between May and July by the NBA, the doofuses in the NFL’s league office figured the best way to get fans talking about their product in the offseason was to anno...
Cris Collinsworth bids farewell to Al Michaels the only way that he knows how
Cris Collinsworth didn’t need a thread, a notes app, or seven Instagram story slides to bid farewell to his longtime broadcasting partner, Al Michaels. He kept it brief, and gave the people what they wanted, and I’m sure Michaels chuckled when he saw it. ...