football

The 2022 NFL season kicks off Thursday, Sept. 8, with the defending champion Los Angeles Rams playing the Buffalo Bills on NBC and Peacock. Coverage begins at 7 p.m.

The National Football League on Friday said that this season’s wild card playoff weekend will conclude with a Monday night game on Jan. 17. The broadcaster for that Monday night game has yet to be determined, the NFL said. The league has been making efforts to create better matchups and better games for its TV partners, which this year signed new long-term deals worth more than $100 million.

The Fighting Irish football faithful will have to pay up to watch Notre Dame’s home opener against Toledo next month. NBC, which has broadcast every Notre Dame home football game since 1991, will sit out the Sept. 11 matchup in favor of NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock. This will be the only Notre Dame game that Peacock will have exclusively; the rest of the Fighting Irish’s home schedule will be available on both Peacock and NBC.

The University of Maryland canceled its last football game of the regular season on Thursday after more than a dozen UMD players tested positive for COVID-19. The game, originally scheduled for Saturday against Michigan State, may not be Maryland’s last of the season if the team decides to compete in the postseason. Six members of the Terrapins’ coaching staff also tested positive, according to the school.

Training camps are set to open on July 28 — and there still isn’t a concrete plan for if and how the season will work in 2020. Above, Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady, far right, is seen along with other players during a private workout in Tampa, Fla., on June 23.

The Washington Redskins intend to announce on Monday that the team will retire its name, two sources said. The move comes 11 days after stadium naming-rights sponsor FedEx’s public statement asking for a change to the controversial moniker. The new name will not be announced immediately because trademark issues are pending, the sources said, but insiders were told today that the “thorough review” announced July 3 has concluded. The team felt it was important to remove any doubts as to the future of the name, one source said.

While there remains plenty of optimism the NFL will play — somehow, someway — networks are fixated on the league’s fall schedule given its dominant position as America’s most valuable television property that accounted for 41 of the 50 top-rated telecasts of any kind in 2019. The lack of certainty has led to uncomfortable conversations among executives.

The group’s stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, Salt Lake City, Honolulu, and Bakersfield, Calif., become the “Official Home of Raiders’ Football” in their markets.

As the bankrupt XFL looks for a buyer, the buyer could be its founder. XFL creditors “seem to believe” McMahon is positioning to buy the league out of bankruptcy. Separately, XFL President Jeffrey Pollack has contacted stadiums in Seattle and St. Louis about reinstating the league’s lease agreements.

“I can’t think of a single player move ever that adjusted requests and turned the process upside down as much as this,” said Fox Sports SVP Michael Mulvihill about Brady signing with Tampa Bay. “I think the league treated everyone well with Tampa Bay because they knew how great everyone’s interest was. It was a significant curveball.”

The NFL and Amazon have inked a multi-year extension to their Thursday Night Football deal, which sees the digital giant stream 11 games throughout the season. First signed back in 2017 and extended in 2018, the agreement sees Amazon show the games on digital via Prime Video and Twitch, with Fox retaining broadcast (plus showing in Spanish on Fox Deportes) and NFL Network handling cable.

The XFL is suspending operations effective immediately, a month after the spring football league stopped play due to the coronavirus pandemic. The league, owned by WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, currently has no plans to start up again 2021.

“The XFL has a good chance to become a small, viable opportunity for clients based on its WWE ownership backing,” says Adam Schwartz of Horizon Media. “I don’t think the XFL will ever become the NFL, but if the product is strong, it will get viewers to watch and, perhaps, to gamble on the games [and] that will draw more viewer interest.”

“Television has been the best marketing tool that we’ve had,” said Joe Browne, who was a league executive for 50 years before retiring in 2016. NBC Sunday Night Football announcer Al Michaels said a huge reason for the league’s popularity on television is because it is the best-suited sport for it. “You have this burst of action and then there is inaction that can be covered by analyzing the play and covering it on replay,” he said. Here are some of the major events that have shaped the NFL and television.

With all NFL games being shown on national networks rather than solely on local channels, the most memorable voices of football are universal. Here’s a look at some of the most important and memorable voices of professional football.