Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
NFL Week 12: Let us give thanks that all the games aren't as unattractive as the Turkey Day pooches.
Nov 24, 2004 | Most of us have a lot to be thankful for at this holiday. For example, you readers can be thankful that I'm not reviving the tradition of my Thanksgiving poem. It's important to me not to let this column fall into a series of shticks because you deserve better. Also, I forgot to write the poem until it was too late.
The NFL has a lot to be thankful for as Week 12 dawns. The league gets a huge break with its pooch of a Thanksgiving Day schedule. Because it sticks doggedly to the who-cares tradition of having the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys host the two Thanksgiving games, the NFL winds up with usually one and often two lousy games. Thanksgiving is that rare day when college football can compete nose-to-nose with the NFL and not look bad.
But the first game Thursday is Indianapolis at Detroit. Hello, gorgeous! As you may have heard, there's been some bad feelings between those two burgs in the last week or so. Think CBS won't play that up -- clicking its collective tongue all the while, of course? Think the fans in Detroit won't be a little hyped?
That break aside, I can't believe the NFL, which is usually so smart about maintaining the quality of its product, doesn't dump the tradition of having Thanksgiving games in Detroit and Dallas, even when the Lions and Cowboys are bad teams. Can you think of any other way in which the NFL lets the product suffer for the sake of some tradition?
This is aside from the question of whether it's fair for the Lions and Cowboys to be the only teams guaranteed not to have to play a road game on three days' rest. On Thanksgiving Day, when I'm looking for an excuse not to help out in the kitchen, Bears-Cowboys -- combined record: 7-13 -- doesn't cut the cranberry sauce.
I realize that just last year, the Thanksgiving games were pretty good, with the 8-3 Cowboys hosting the 7-4 Dolphins, who clobbered them, and the 3-7 Lions rallying to upset the 6-5 Packers. But that was dumb luck. This century only eight of the 20 teams who have played on Thanksgiving Day have had winning records, and two of those were only 6-5. The Thanksgiving home games should rotate around the league.
This is another of my hopeless causes, so let's not worry too much about it and turn instead to the Week 12 games, and please note that with the opening sentence of this pre-Thanksgiving column, I have fulfilled a clause in the standard sports columnist contract.
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