One reason I could never live on the West Coast — aside from the warrants out for my arrest in every county from Multnomah to Imperial — is that I’d have to wake up before noon on a Sunday to watch football. But today the NFL decided that the entire continental U.S. must wake up early to catch games — or at least the four bouts taking place in London in 2015.
The league has announced the schedule for the three games that will all take place at Wembley Stadium in London next season, and all of which will kick off at the too-early hour of 9:30 a.m. ET, meaning a 6:30 a.m. start for the millions of football fans in PT.
If you live in Hawaii, it’s going to be the middle of the night when these games start, but you live in Hawaii so you have very little to complain about.
Most of the match-ups involve teams based in the Eastern time zone, so hometown fans at least won’t have to get up before dawn to see their team play. The farthest west team representing the NFL in London will be the Kansas City Chiefs, whose home base in the Central time zone will have to be awake by 8:30 a.m. to see them play the Detroit Lions.
The London games have usually been played later in the day, but doing so puts them in the mix with the rest of the daytime Sunday games — thus making them less “event”-like. Moving them earlier in the day highlights their specialness.
We can’t help but agree with NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal’s prediction that early Sunday morning games might become a more regular thing, unless these are all a ratings disaster.
The league has made no attempt to hide the fact that it wants to create as many spotlight games as possible, and if it can successfully bookend the Sunday afternoon games with both Sunday Night Football and these god-awful early games, then you know it will do it.
Anyway, here is the full slate of Sunday morning games that you’ll probably miss because you have other things to do.
October 4: New York Jets vs. Miami Dolphins
October 25: Buffalo Bills vs. Jacksonville Jaguars
November 1: Detroit Lions vs. Kansas City Chiefs
by Chris Morran via Consumerist