Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Want to make an NFL game an event? ‘Put a Chiefs game there’
For 25 years Mike North has been working for the NFL, and he has spent the past 22 of those in the league’s Broadcasting Department. As the VP of Broadcast Planning, North is an integral part of the schedule-making process, and has been referred to as the league’s “scheduling guru.” With the NFL branching out into more and more streaming services, North has an interesting idea regaring how the league can turn new games — such as the push into Black Friday or Christmas Day by the NFL — into events.
“Put a Chiefs game there.”
Speaking with ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter on “The Adam Schefter Podcast,” North talked about some of the difficulties in creating schedules, and a discussion regarding strength of schedules quickly veered towards the Kansas City Chiefs.
Good teams win, bad teams struggle.
“You could give a team that doesn’t have a great roster, the quote unquote easiest schedule and they’re still going to go 4-13. You could give the Kansas City Chiefs the worst possible schedule and some have been saying we did, right,” said North. “They’re playing every day of the week except a Tuesday. They’ve got, you know, multiple short weeks and catch whatever Buffalo off their bye and Taylor Swift is going to be there. Like we maybe gave the Chiefs the hardest schedule in the league.
“I suspect they’re gonna be there come playoff time.”
Schefter then asked if North had heard any complaints from Kansas City regarding the Chiefs’ schedule. That’s when the schedule guru noted how the team had become a “bell cow” for the league, with some of the newer games the NFL is adding to the schedule each year.
“I mean, look, they’ve been our bell cow for a while,” started North.
“They’re kind of used to carrying our water for some of these unique kind of opportunities here. You think about that Peacock playoff game last year. If you want to make Peacock a destination for an NFL playoff game, well, put a Chiefs game there. If Amazon wants to continue to try to build Black Friday into an event, even though it’s not a national holiday. But can we turn it into one where instead of going the mall, we’re gonna stay home and watch a game on television at three o’clock in the afternoon?
“Put a Chiefs game there.
“You want to make Christmas on Netflix a thing, put a Chiefs game there.
“Like you can’t go to that well over and over again. There’s only so many Chiefs games and obviously a lot of other really good teams and good stars and storylines in this league, but the Chiefs definitely were not surprised by their national television [schedule], and some of the windows that we decided to use them.”
You can see North’s exchange with Schefter here:
As North notes, the Chiefs play on six of the seven days of the week this season, and are featured in a number of “island” games. Kansas City plays the traditional season-opening game, when they host the Baltimore Ravens on the Thursday night of Week 1 in a rematch of the AFC Championship Game.
Kansas City also plays on Black Friday against the Las Vegas Raiders, on the Saturday before Christmas against the Houston Texans, and then on Christmas Day — a Wednesday — against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Put a Chiefs game there,” indeed.
