As the NFL prepares to reveal its 2024 schedule on Wednesday night, there has been discussion pertaining to the prime-time football game it will play to begin the season on Friday night. The Week 1 matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles will take place from Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil broadcast exclusively on Peacock on Friday, Sept. 6 at 8:20 p.m. EST. Much to the chagrin of Daryle “The Guru” Johnson though, the matchup is taking place on a Friday rather than another day of the week.
The Packers-Eagles matchup represents the first NFL game to be played on a Friday during the league’s opening week in 54 years. It will follow an opening night matchup on NBC and Peacock featuring the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Baltimore Ravens. The NFL has played just 12 games on a Friday since merging with the AFL ahead of the 1970 season, the most recent of which is the Black Friday Football matchup that was presented on Amazon Prime Video.
Under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, antitrust immunity is withdrawn for any professional football telecast if a high school or college football game is being played within 75 miles on a Friday night (after 6 p.m.) or Saturday from the second weekend in September until the second weekend in December.
“That’s for high schoolers; that’s for Happy Hour. Football – and I get it the end of the year all depending on when Christmas or New Year’s Day [are], you get the Friday or Saturday games, but to just come out and do that to the kids, I just don’t like it man,” Johnson said on Monday’s edition of Steiney and Guru on 95.7 The Game. “[Roger] Goodell, just whatever figure it is, if you meet it, you can get the NFL.”
With the rest of the schedule being released on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. EST, the program thought about how many prime time games the San Francisco 49ers should be granted. The team has a plethora of star players, including quarterback Brock Purdy, running back Christian McCaffrey and defensive end Nick Bosa, and has won two NFC Championships in the last five seasons. Last season, the schedule release tabbed the 49ers for five games in prime-time television, which was in a tie for second place in the NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys led the way with six prime-time games each at the time of the schedule release. Last year, the NFL attained an average of 17.9 million viewers across its regular-season slate of games, an increase of 7% from the 2022 season.
“I’m going seven,” Johnson said. “I think they’re going to be a fixture on Thanksgiving night – that night game, I think they get that.”
“I would like that,” Evan Giddings replied, filling in for Matt Steinmetz. “Honestly I just want to see the Niners in the spotlight as much as possible. We’re going to watch the games obviously – maybe get down to one or two depending – but the Niners deserve, I think, just as many prime time games as the Chiefs even though they lost to them.”.
