SOMEWHERE IN SUBURBAN AMERICA — When safety Damar Hamlin’s near-fatal injury during the final weekend of the regular NFL season caused a cancellation of the Bills-Bengals game, the possibility of a neutral site playoff game became a real contingency. Despite the Bills rendering the concept moot with their loss in last weekend’s opening playoff round, rumors have been circulating that the league is moving forward with plans to hold future playoff games at neutral sites.
This venue scuttlebutt centers on the idea that the conference championships are more marketable as warm-weather “destination” events, rather than as the traditional reward of a home field game for the team with the better regular-season record. Nobody from the NFL has confirmed or denied these reports, but there seems to be a lot of support among ownership for the idea of turning this final round of the playoffs into a pair of quasi/mini Super Bowls leading up to the main event two weeks later.
In the last couple of days, however, it seems that the league has decided to go several steps further and turn the entire 2023 league schedule into a series of neutral site games. Unfortunately for tradition-minded fans, the logistics of scheduling and finding suitable venues for 14 to 16 games every week for 18 weeks was apparently too daunting for the statistical minds at the league offices. Despite their expertise in navigating arcane salary cap formulae and managing to find opponents for 32 teams every week, these same number-crunchers have decided that accommodating fans and the media is just too complicated.
Instead, at least according to our sources, the NFL has decided to play all of their games at a secret location or locations to be determined. Neither fans nor the media will be invited, making the whole thing akin to the USFL redux currently gearing up for its second season. All games will be televised, of course, but they will now be pay-per-view, with preliminary estimates pegging the per game viewing fee at $99.95.
Additionally, team owners have apparently decided to “lay off” all 1,700-plus players currently employed by the league and replace them with a combination of animatronic robots and computer-generated images. The NFL has consulted with the Department of Labor, and seems well within in rights to jettison the hefty player salaries of what they consider “at will” employees.
Why the secrecy about the locations? With the dismissal of actual human players, it seems evident that there really won’t be any “locations” at all, with all games emanating from an office somewhere in Silicon Valley. At least we think that’s where it is.
The leading online sports betting sites seemed unfazed by the possibility of offering wagers on imaginary games. Las Vegas sports gambling consultant Sheldon “The Turk” Goldfarb opined that “it just won’t matter to the average dipshit. These morons will bet on anything. Hell, we’re thinking about taking action on games that have already happened. I had a guy call just yesterday wanting odds on the 1973 World Series. I gave him plus-twenty thousand to take the Mets.”