SI.com Daily Cover: How to Save NFL Season

MLB is on the brink, and college football is struggling to conceive how to stage a season at all. It’s time for the NFL to consider a much different approach to 2020.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Commissioner Goodell, let me introduce you to Mitch Goldich.

How on earth is the NFL going to play a full schedule when Major League Baseball can't get through its first month without teams having to postpone entire series? With MLB seemingly on the brink and college footballis struggling to conceive how to stage a season at all, perhaps it is time for the NFL to consider a much different approach to 2020.

Enter Goldich in Thursday’s SI.com Daily Cover:

It’s a near-certainty that as we get closer to Week 1, the NFL will only be faced with increasingly difficult decisions, and it may be more prudent to make a sweeping decision now rather than wait until it’s right up against a harder deadline—when it’s perhaps too late to do anything drastic. MLB fought over money to the very last day, forcing it to arrive late to the party on issues like health and safety, and the logistics of actually putting the season together. The NFL can’t afford (and yes, we’re also talking about money here) to repeat that same mistake.

In a world where we are constantly evaluating best-case and worst-case scenarios, at some point it makes sense to cut your losses. Rather than going into a season held together with Scotch tape, the NFL could go in with a plan it feels more confident in, with enough lead time to prepare for it fairly and, in the case of the revised TV schedule, as profitably as possible.

Everyone knows the potential problems. Goldich offers some sensible solutions. Here are two of them.

– Eight-game schedules, with a bye after every game. “The MLB season has been KO’d by the fact that they are playing so frequently,” Goldich wrote. “It’s hard to handle false positives and lagging test results when there is another game the next day.”

– Play every game at night, which would allow teams to come and go in one day and avoid staying in a hotel. And, since teams are getting every-other week off, those games could be played over a span of four days, which could be a TV bonanza.

Click here to see all of Goldich’s ideas.