National Football League

The NFL should eliminate its preseason

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:29 p.m. ET

Dieter Kurtenbach

The NFL preseason has always been a cash grab — a sham created to line the pockets of team owners who don't need the money.

The preseason is an unnecessary and meaningless quarter of a campaign that rips off fans, puts players at risk of significant injury and provides little, if any, entertainment value.

There's no reason the NFL preseason should exist. It needs to be eliminated.

This is a tall ask, no doubt. The NFL preseason is anticipated and watched by millions of American annually. Fans are already clamoring for Sunday’s Hall of Fame game between the Packers and the Colts — one of five (!!!) preseason games for the two teams will play before the real season starts.

And the owners and the league will never get rid of the preseason. These meaningless games — which cause more harm than good for both the players and the fans — rake in millions of dollars annually.

But let’s pretend for a moment that the goal of professional sports isn’t to make ungodly sums of money; let’s suppose that putting the highest quality iteration of the sport — with the highest possible integrity attached to it — is the league's motivating factor.

If that were the case, there’s no chance the preseason would exist.

It would be nice to live in that world.

But we clearly don’t. Last August, a meaningless exhibition football game was watched by millions of television-viewing Americans, drawing a larger rating than the Indianapolis 500, the NBA’s conference finals and the American and National League championship series.

In all, roughly 7 of every 100 households in America watched the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings play in the 2015 Hall of Fame Game — though the players on both teams hardly resembled the Steelers and Vikings who played in the regular season and later playoffs. But make no mistake, the game was billed as Ben Roethlisberger against Adrian Peterson.

Instead, fans got Mike Kafka throwing a 34-yard touchdown to MyCole Pruitt on a broken play. Quick — which team earned six points on that one?

The NFL could get rid of one or even two preseason games, should the league come to the determination such a cut is in the best interest of the teams — this is a right was expressly granted to the commissioner in the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement — but instead we have four, for some teams five, meaningless games. Why?

What are the benefits of preseason games, other than the money they can bring in for the league and its teams? It’s hard to find any.

Case in point: the 2008 Lions won all four of their preseason games. They didn't win another game all season, going 0-16.

Strategy and team building aren’t reasons that hold water — preseason game playbooks consist of little more than base plays in base formations. Teams aren’t “trying stuff out” — they’re evaluating and looking for players to cut in an attempt to get rosters down to 53. They’re sold like real games, but they’re not. Have you figured out what team MyCole Pruitt played for yet?

If a preseason were necessary to prepare for the regular season, college football teams would have one. The college regular season is exponentially more important than the NFL regular season — an early-season loss can all but end Georgia’s national title chances, but the Seahawks seem to spot the league three losses at the beginning of every season and they still contend for Super Bowls. Given the prices of some college football TV deals, there would be plenty of money to be made with an NCAA preseason, too. Instead, No. 1 Alabama will head into a Week 1 matchup with a ranked USC squad having last played against another team in January.

And the argument that the preseason exists to evaluate players is weak and sadistic.

NFL teams don’t need a preseason game to see whether young and inexperienced players are capable of contributing to an NFL team — more often than not, those young and inexperienced players are going up against other late-round picks and undrafted free agents in preseason games.

NFL teams have scouts and coaches who can determine whether a player is a first-round pick from drills at the Senior Bowl or NFL Combine, so it’s hard to believe that those same scouts and coaches need four fake games to do something they should be able to do on the team’s practice field.

Though roster thinning is a real challenge for teams during training camp, there’s no reason to stage games that drastically increase the rate of injuries for its sake. Football is an attrition sport, and playing a quarter of a season before the real games even start is a foolish proposition.

Surely, coaches and players could be convinced to eliminate the NFL preseason.

The hard sell is going to be the teams and league office. They’re going to have to be made whole.

The NFL preseason has been around as long as the league, and it has always been a purely financial play. Before the AFL-NFL merger, teams played exhibition games — sometimes during bye weeks — to pad the bottom line. The NFL wasn’t a $15 billion industry then, but it is now, and yet the exhibition games continue.

With franchise values so high, why do owners need to continue to swindle season ticket holders to pay for two meaningless games that will be played by rosters mostly comprised of guys that will be cut before the start of the season?

Yep, if you want to own season tickets to any team in the NFL, you’re on the hook for that team’s two preseason games — at full regular-season prices, in most cases.

That’s why the NFL preseason exists. That and the big-money deals teams can land from local television affiliates, which can bid to air the unattached preseason games.

It’s hard to see that going away, even if the preseason holds no true value from a competitive standpoint. The NFL would have to add more games to the end of the regular season or water down the playoffs with another round to make up the revenue difference.

But why put star players out on the field for more games when you can make as much money leading on desperate young players who have next to no shot at making the league?

Yes, it’s hard to make the case for the NFL preseason to continue to exist — other than it’s positive financial impact. It’s too bad that’s the only aspect that matters.