Apr 3, 2021 4 min read

Who’s ready for a 17-game NFL season?

Apparently not some people, who are screaming bloody murder about something that was a given when the players agreed to a new CBA last spring that gave owners permission to go to 17 games.

The league’s owners last week finally voted to approve a 17-regular season, 3-preseason game format that will have an additional regular season game while taking one preseason contest off the slate.

So, what will that mean for fans? Every other year they’ll have one fewer meaningless preseason game to pay for or watch.

It also means that fans will get an opportunity to see their favorite team play some of the stars from the other conference more often than once every four years. For example, this year, the Steelers will host the Seattle Seahawks and Russell Wilson.

Wilson and the Seahawks were in Pittsburgh in 2019. Under the old rules, they would not have returned to Pittsburgh until 2027. The Steelers will still visit Seattle in 2023, but in the meantime, fans will get to watch Wilson again here.

Nothing wrong with that.

The owners and players will, of course, be compensated for that additional game. But that’s only fair.

Really, I don’t understand the arguments against it.

Spare me the “sacred” records that will be broken. Stop 20 people on the street and ask them who is the all-time single-season passing or rushing yardage leader. You might get 20 different answers.

And playing 17 games is not all that different than playing 16. After all, football is a violent game. If playing 17 of them is horrible for professional athletes, then why is it OK for high school teams to play 16 games to get to a PIAA championship?

In addition to approving the 17-game schedule, the new CBA expanded to 55 players and practice squad rosters to 12 players. A lot of high schools would love to have that many players.

Somehow, we’ll live with a 17-game season. It will work just fine. In a few years, nobody will remember why the league played 16 games.

And spare me the 32-team, 16 games, eight divisions having symmetry. The NFL spent a longer period of time playing a 16-game schedule with fewer than 32 teams than it did with them. After all, Houston was added as the 32nd franchise in 2002. The NFL expanded from a 14 to 16-game schedule in 1978.

It will be OK.

• Ke’Bryan Hayes is going to be a star this year for the Pirates. Heck, he was a star in the shortened season last year.

That’s why the Pirates tried – unsuccessfully – to sign him to a long-term deal this year. He looks like the kind of player you can build a team around.

Of course, we’ve seen this all before.

Then again, trying to build a team around the likes of Jason Kendall or Jason Bay probably wasn’t the best of ideas. They were good players. But they weren’t close to being stars.

• The Pirates have some other good, young players. What they don’t have is a starting pitching rotation.

That’s going to be a problem.

• It’s hard not to like what the WPIAL did with its baseball schedule this year, having teams play section opponents on back-to-back days.

In the past, you’d play a balanced schedule that was spread out into what was essentially a first and second half. If coaches handled their pitching staff correctly, they could throw their ace against a team both times through the schedule.

Often times, the program that won the section wasn’t the one that fielded the best team, but the one that had the best pitcher.

Now, it’s much more likely that the best team will win each section.

• If you haven’t enjoyed this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, you just don’t like basketball.

There have been upsets galore. There have been great endings.

It’s the best tournament in sports, bar none.

Some hockey fans will claim that tournament is the best in all of sports. But any tournament in which you can lose 12 times and still win the championship can’t be the best.

The one-and-done nature of the men’s basketball tournament, where any team can lose on a given night, makes it exciting. And special.