Latest / Unicorn Football Talk / State of the NFL: Part 3

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State of the NFL: Part 3 · Unicorn Football Talk

• Emily Schmidt: Hi Hillary. back. Hilary: Hey Emily. Emily Schmidt: Welcome back to another episode, everyone, of Unicorn Football Talk. This is our third and final episode of our State of the NFL series. Hilary: Great. What are we talking about? Emily Schmidt: Well, just as a reminder, this is something we're planning to do every year to check in on how the NFL is doing from a business player and fan perspective. we're gonna wrap up by talking all things games. Where they're played, when they're played, how many are played. on the surface it doesn't seem super complicated, but there are some things to discuss for sure. Hilary: Great. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Let's get started. Emily Schmidt: We're gonna start by talking about the number of games in the regular season. The NFL they've been increasing the number of games per season over a long, long period of time. So in the early days before nineteen forty-six, there were like ten to twelve games per season. And then nineteen forty-seven and nineteen sixty, they were set at twelve games. And then sixty-one to seventy-seven, they expanded to fourteen. And then seventy eight to twenty twenty, they went to sixteen games. But we're not at sixteen now, are we? Hilary: No, in the sixteen games, that was when they introduced the bye week. Is that right? So because really it's it's really seventeen weeks in the season, sixteen games. Yeah. Okay. Emily Schmidt: That is true. Yeah. So then they started seventeen games. And this to me is where I think the overreach started to happen. In twenty twenty one, the seventeen games are played over eighteen weeks. Hilary: Okay. And that's start including preseason, not including preseason. Emily Schmidt: Not including preseason. Hilary: So really we're running mid mid August through into late January now. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, so preseason is a concept that's gone back to all the way to the beginning. I didn't know that. I learned that. And basically there used to be more preseason games. And as we added more regular season, they've been cutting back on preseason. So we're down to three games now. Three preseason games. Well, so Hilary: Okay. Okay. Emily Schmidt: Before we move on, so what do you think? Ha do you like more games? Did you like the expansion to seventeen games? Hilary: You know, I think I'm okay with where it is now. I wonder about the loss of preseason games and if there's any effect on the players and team continuity and that kind of stuff, as they have in essence less weeks to kind of practice and get things together, especially like for rookies or for young players trying to make the team and those two, three games are their only opportunity to show their skills. I I'm not a fan of any less preseason games. How's that? Emily Schmidt: Well, I will just do a different take as a season ticket holder. I hate that they force us to buy the preseason games. They are not real games and if they want to keep fine. But that should be a different package and open it up for other people to buy. And I know they won't sell out, of course they'll never do that. They'll never do that. Hilary: Okay. Emily Schmidt: but so me, I feel differently. I'm not okay with the seventeenth game. I think they should have stopped at sixteen. I don't like odd number, first of all. I hate that their home and away is not split up equally. So some years you have eight home season games, sometimes you have nine. so I think sixteen was the sweet spot. But they are talking about an eighteenth game. Hilary: Yeah, I did some digging into that. And the NFL as an entity and the owners are really in favor of this 18th game and they're pushing really hard for it. But the players association has publicly stated an opposition to this and really they're not on board. And I don't know that it's gonna happen. The original push was maybe for next year. I saw some comments by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk that that you know, ne 2027 is not likely. And part of that is because the players association is in the middle of their collective bargaining agreement time period. And it's not up again until 2030. But 2028, they haven't set the Super Bowl date yet. I think they're kind of leaving that window open. An 18th game, if they just tack it on to the end, would push them into the President's Day weekend, which the NFL looks at as a really sweet weekend for a lot of exposure on that holiday weekend. There's an extra day. They think they could get a lot of TV rights and revenue and things generated by having something on that weekend. This feels like a money grab to me. I'm not on board for the 18th game. Emily Schmidt: Of course it's a money crab. Hilary: Board. Emily Schmidt: I think sixteen was the sweet spot and I I think the players go through a lot physically in a season and pushing from sixteen to then seventeen and now eighteen, which it is going to happen. It's just a matter of when. To me, it's just part of the story about quality, how the quality of the games will suffer when you just take more, more, more. So I I don't like it. Hilary: Okay. And it's not really eighteen games either for anybody who makes the playoffs, right? Because you've got the eighteen season plus than if you're in a wild card spot or however far you go and they're yeah, I I don't know. Not I I not a fan. Emily Schmidt: Plus. Okay. Anything else you wanna say about the number of games? I'm not a fan, not feeling good about it. Hilary: Okay. I think we're in agreement there. Emily Schmidt: No? Okay, so in case you think I'm just negative, because I feel like I've said a lot of negative things so far on this podcast, let's talk about something that I think is actually good. Emily: And that's how the NFL determines who plays every year. I think their formula is a great formula. to explain it, let's use the Seahawks as an example. so every team. is in an NFC or AFC division made up of four teams total. For the Seahawks, it's the NFC West. They will play each division opponent, Rams, Niners, Cardinals, twice. That's six games every year. And then they play another NFC division that rotates every year. This year it's the NFC East. So that adds four games. Now we're at 10 games. There are two other NFC divisions. So each team in the NFC West will match up against one opponent in these two divisions, depending on how well they did the year before. So the Seahawks were first in their division. So they'll play the other two teams that finished first. This year it's the Bears and Panthers. That gets us to 12 games. And then every year the NFC plays a division in the AFC that rotates around. This year it's the AFC West. So that's four extra teams and it brings us to sixteen. And as we just discussed, they added a 17th game a few years ago. So now we play the number one team in another AFC division that rotates around, which is the Patriots this year. And that brings us to 17. Emily Schmidt: I think it's a great I think it's a great formula. I don't really understand how they decide home in a way. That's the one thing I don't I don't understand, but I don't really have any complaints there. There's nothing I would want to change personally. Hilary: Okay. I agree with that format, but I'm not a fan of the placement of a larger percentage of the divisional games at the back half of the schedule. I think a lot of that is just again the NFL on a quest to promote and drive excitement and viewership at the end of the season. And an extreme example I'm gonna give from this season upcoming is is that the Seahawks play the Rams in week 16 and 18. I think the NFL's betting on the fact that those two teams are going to be contenders and they want to generate that excitement at the end of the season. But I would just really like to see the divisional games spread out kind of evenly through the season. That's Emily Schmidt: I Hilary: my only comment on that. Emily Schmidt: I agree with you. Yeah. Emily: You measure yourself early in the season, you hopefully improve, and then measure yourself again near the end of the season. So yeah, I agree. Okay, so now we're gonna talk about the days of the week that games are played on. Emily Schmidt: So forever and Hilary: Yeah. Emily Schmidt: always, it was always Sunday and Thanksgiving Day. So until the 70s or 1970s, it was just Sunday and Thanksgiving Day. in 1970, Monday night football was introduced. So one game a week on Monday. And in then 1970, eighty seven Sunday night football was introduced. So it's still Sunday. Yeah. Hilary: So that's adding that night that's adding that night game, right? The sec second game on Sunday or or the second time slot of games on Sunday. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, technically third, but yes. it's still Sunday, but it's another, time slot. And to me, this is where perfection ended. That was a good formula in my opinion. then they just wanted more, as you know. Thursday night football debuted in two thousand six, but it was late, like the end of the season, when it was ramping up to playoffs and they expanded to having it every week in twenty twelve. And then they added Christmas Day games and then there are Saturday games. And now we have a Wednesday night game to kick off the season next year. Hilary: Well, Emily, what the heck am I gonna do on Tuesday? Because it sounds to me like that's the only night of the week left. Emily Schmidt: But isn't that good? Like, that's the point. Like I just think about how much I love Christmas. Well, if Christmas was every month, would I like Christmas as much? I mean, I think having that anticipation and holding out for that game makes the product more desirable. But now it's just everywhere and all the time. And I I don't like it. But the NFL doesn't care whether I like it. Hilary: I I agree my my I agree. My former comment was based on sarcasm. And part of the challenge I have is that I also follow college football, which traditionally was Saturdays, but now there are Friday night games for college and there's talk of expanding the college coverage to other days of the week as well. So I think there's a little bit of conflict there, at least for me personally, between the two, leagues and I just kinda like to see everyone have their own space and not the overlap. Emily Schmidt: I agree. and this is coming from somebody that like loves to watch football I just think that I don't need it every day. but I think what's been really interesting as the games have been put on different Emily: days. Emily Schmidt: it's introduced a new thing to watch out for called the rest edge. So as we add more games on different days, teams are playing other teams on different amounts of rest. And you found this incredibly interesting article. All credit goes to someone named Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis. And he did this deep dive, like really deep dive. Interesting. I encourage you all, if you're interested, to go find the article about where he analyzes how much rest each team has and fairness around that. If you summarize one takeaway is that the 2026 NFL schedule is the least equitable in NFL history across all rest metrics. And we won't go into all of them, but he measures net rest edge, net rest disadvantage, net rest delta, games with three plus days rest advantage, or games with any rest advantage. So if you just think about rest edge. It is the number of day extra days a team has to rest and prepare for the game over their opponent. Does that make sense? Hilary: Okay. So yeah, give me an example. Emily Schmidt: So if the Dolphins have a full seven day bye week ahead of their game versus the Bills, and the Bills played on Monday night football and are in a short week, the Dolphins have a rest edge of eight days before their game against the Bills, and the Bills have a rest edge of negative eight days before their game with the Dolphins. Hilary: Okay, okay. So that affects travel, that affects fatigue, that affects injury recovery, all kinds of stuff. That's really interesting. Emily Schmidt: Yeah. And game planning and everything. Hilary: Okay, okay. And they know that in advance 'cause the schedule's set in advance, right? Yeah, okay. Emily Schmidt: Yeah. And this this article did not hold back on the NFL and just comes out and says the NFL does not care about rest. They are all about lucrative media deals and they don't believe rest disparity matters. And their priority is to put games on that will get the most viewership in Prime Windows to make the most money possible. Hilary: This feels kind of yucky to me. I did a little diving into the charts and metrics that Warren put up, and the disparity is huge across the season. So, for example, the Chicago Bears, Emily Schmidt: It Hilary: I guess, fared the best in that they have a plus fifteen day advantage over all of their opponents, right? Cumulative over the season. They get 15 more days of rest. The Rams have a negative 24. That's three weeks worth of recovery, travel, planning, like all kinds of stuff. it kind of breaks out that there are 15 teams in the positive on the rest edge. The Bears have 15 days, the Bills have 14 days, and the Cowboys have 12. And then it kind of tapers down from there. There's a lot of teams that are kind of in the middle, maybe two or three days positive. No no days, net zero. There's two teams like that. and then heading into the negative. But when you get to the way negative side, the Rams are at negative 24 days, the Eagles are at negative 15 days, and the Raiders are at minus 13 days. So that's a lot of time. And I didn't dig into also how many teams are playing teams coming off of bye weeks. But I know that that's not quite equitable either. There are some teams with none, and there are some teams playing three or four after the bye week. you know, it's not only the physical part, I don't think. There's a lot of disparity for the teams coming off that bye week or that rest edge when you're talking about the game preparation or even the ability to travel if your games are several in a row that are away or at home. I just never thought about this stuff before. It's really interesting. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, so again, this is a goalmine of information, this site, and there's this quote from the NFL that you have two hundred and seventy two games and they're all assets. They are worth a little something different, and they wanna make sure that the ones that are worth the most are available to as many fans as possible. They're just never going to prioritize Rest Edge. And the reason I care is I care about the quality of the game and I do want it to be as fair and equitable as possible to ensure that we have the best games and you have the champion at the end of the season. He did say in the article, do you know who had the best rest edge last year? Hilary: I'm gonna take a guess it was one of the Super Bowl teams. Emily Schmidt: It was the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl champs. And I am not saying that Seattle wasn't a great team. Obviously they were a great team, but it's a game of inches and every little bit helps. And so who knows if they had the Rams rest edge from this year, would we have gone to the Super Bowl? I don't know. Hilary: Yeah. Emily Schmidt: so I guess my only parting thought is the NFL focuses on the number of viewers for a game and that is clearly all they care about. I'm just curious if it'll eventually come back to bite them. It won't come back to bite them in the next year, but eventually over time will the quality suffer enough that they'll have to pay attention. That's a question I have. I don't know. Hilary: Okay. I I would agree with that and I guess not only the quality of the game but player safety on one hand begin to focus more on making sure that the players are safe and don't play hurt and that kind of thing when you're coming off, you know, the short week playing someone who's had eight, nine days advantage. That that's gotta play into it, I would think. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, to me that goes into quality as well. Okay, next area we're gonna cover is about where games are played and why are we even talking about this? Because for most of the history, teams played their home games at home and then they had away games. but the NFL has been wanting to expand internationally. And until two thousand five the only international games were preseason. And then in two thousand There was one game. And then starting in 2007, there was an annual series at Wembley. And then starting, it's just it's gonna keep building. spoiler. starting in 2012, the Jags have started playing one home game in London every year. And then Hilary: Yeah, and that's kind of fascinating to me. Like I haven't done any research on that, but what's what's the connection there? Why the Jaguars? Why in London? Why every year it seems to be this little thing that's kind of independent from the schedule of the other international games Emily: Yeah, great question. Khan, the owner of the Jags since around twenty twelve, I think. He quickly set a strategy to grow internationally. Jacksonville is a really small market and he saw an opportunity to grow the fan base. And also Khan was interested in buying a Premier League soccer team in London, which he did in 2013. So he was getting familiar with the market. He's like, I wanna be the adopted team of London. So he pitched up giving a home team game to the NFL and they took him up on it. But getting back to the timeline of growth, starting in twenty twenty five, the NFL can schedule up to eight games a year internationally. Emily Schmidt: And every team is required to least play once every four years abroad. More cities have been added. And then twenty twenty six. Hilary: 2026, they're gonna play a record number of international games. I think it's nine, or I shouldn't say think, it is nine, and it's scheduled to grow further in 2027. they announced at the owners meeting that that there was a an approval to increase the cap eventually to ten. And that doesn't count the Jaguars. separate game. So here we go. The creep, the creep, the creep. in twenty twenty six, the NFL is gonna play in Australia, in Brazil, in Emily Schmidt: Just Hilary: the UK, in France, in Spain, in Germany, and in Mexico. And there's other countries that are interested to come online, including Japan and Italy in the future. Emily Schmidt: And then did you hear, I think this happened just a little bit ago, before teams could protect two home games a year from being sent over internationally, and that restriction has now been removed. the NFL VP of broadcast planning said it was out of respect for the international fans. quote You know, we can't have a team say, Well, I don't want my two best games ineligible for international. What kind of message does that send to the international fans? That's an exact quote. And Hilary: What kind of message does that send to the ticket holder and the home fans? Emily Schmidt: that's what I was gonna say. As a seasoned ticket holder, you're saying you value international fans the same as you value the people that have created all the fandom for the sport and how much money. I've given year over year, and you don't care about that. So I'm sorry for being so negative this episode, but I can't help it. Hilary: Yeah, it's a trend, right? I mean We're drifting toward monetization. Well, not drifting. We are in a state of monetization in every possible way of the league and the individual teams. Emily Schmidt: without Hilary: That's where we're at. Emily Schmidt: without consideration for fans. So to me it's not even just about me potentially losing one of the best home games. But, you know, I think about again the quality. I don't think it's that easy traveling to Europe from Seattle. It's not like you can recover immediately. And when we watched the Seahawks play in Germany, wasn't I up at like six thirty in the morning to watch? Hilary: Yeah, I don't remember. I'm thinking it's a long haul the other way. I mean, this year it's two West Coast teams playing in Australia, but man, if you're the Buffalo Bills and you get tapped to go to Japan or Australia or something, that is one long day. Two days, really. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, so I don't like it. I don't mind the idea of bringing in international fans. I just think we can't magically transport to the other side of the world and there are logistics you have to deal with that I would look for different ways. I don't know what those ways are, whether you play the first month of the season over there and everybody plays a couple games over there or something and then you come back here. I don't know. Hilary: Does this tie back a little bit also to something we talked about in a prior podcast where when we talked about revenue generated by the NFL versus revenue generated by the individual teams, that really just those fans in the stadium are a drop in the bucket of the full revenue picture? And that's why in some ways the consideration isn't there for the fan versus the media rights and that kind of stuff. Emily Schmidt: I think that's a good point. I think the media rights are the number one thing that they think about. And then obviously if you are getting more fans, there could be more people watching from international markets, more merch sales. Just more, more, more. Hilary: Sure, sure. Okay, okay. So this kind of ties in a little bit to the next topic that you suggested, which we talk about, which I agree in that we've got all these games, they're on all different days, they're spread out in all different time zones now, including international. And how the heck do you even find the game you want to watch? Because there are Sundays when I am flipping the remote. Nope, not here. Nope, not here. And I Hard time even finding the game. So let's talk about TV and where the games are broadcast. Emily Schmidt: Man, this podcast has been such a bummer because this is another area where it's not beneficial to us. It is beneficial to the NFL. you know, obviously the early days they were on network TV. And actually the very early days games were sold team by team to local stations. but eventually the collective bargaining and rights are sold as a package. And in 1987, cable TV is a thing, and ESPN became the first cable network to air a regular season game. another major moment was Fox outbidding CBS. in nineteen ninety-four because Fox was not one of the big three networks at the time. So that was kind of a big deal. But at least it was still network TV. in twenty eleven the Super Bowl was streamed for the first time. I didn't know that, obviously along with a broadcast. And then it's more recent that you've seen a major shift. So Amazon is the first streaming service to own a national package, Thursday Night Football. And then there's been a bunch of just fragmented one off games. this one is the one that got me really frustrated was Peacock hosted the first ever exclusive streaming only playoff game, Chiefs Dolphins. And I I fell for it because I don't wanna miss a playoff game. So I didn't have Peacock and guess what? Now I do. Hilary: remember that. Yeah. And you still do, right? Emily Schmidt: I still do. I should have canceled it, but I didn't. so yeah, and know Netflix is in the game and they've secured a multi year deal for Christmas Day games. And from one of the NFL sites, they currently estimate that eighty seven percent of their games are still on broadcast TV. this was a comment they made when they were pushing back on recent government criticism. But how is that something to be proud of? Eighty seven percent that still leaves a chunk that aren't on broadcast TV. So I don't know. I'm not super happy about it. How are you feeling? Hilary: I'm really torn because I've been trying for a long time in our own personal household to cut the cord to cable, period, and go to just streaming. And the only reason I haven't is because I can't figure out how to get all my sports just streaming. So I'm still paying a lot for cable that I don't really watch any of the channels except for the sport channels. And I'm also paying for streaming services on top of that to cover what I can't get. on my cable package. So yeah, you know, it's I I guess it's the expense of my hobby, right? Emily Schmidt: yeah, I don't really have anything else to add on that. over time it's more and more streaming and it will continue to track that way and I don't think it's good for us, but If you think you're good, I'll move on. Hilary: Yeah, let's move on. Emily Schmidt: There's only one more topic, playoff format. So I suggested this as another topic because it's just another example of the NFL wanting more and more and more. in the early, early days, there were only two teams in the playoffs, and it's it's over time it's gone up obviously to four teams and then eight teams, and then starting in seventy-eight, it was ten teams, and then starting in ninety, it was twelve teams. where the number one and two seeds of each of the NFC and AFC got the by. And this is where I think they just started to push it too far was 2020, where they now 14 teams out of 32 and only the number one seed gets the bye. I think that was one step too far for me. I think the format that existed with the there were only four wildcard games instead of six that first weekend. I like that the first two seeds got bys. I think the number two seed deserves it. I don't know. Do you have any feelings? Hilary: that well I I guess I'm I need to do a little more digging because I'm wondering in 1970 when they had eight teams in the playoff how many teams total were in the league? Probably not 32 probably a lower number right so proportionally you had the same number of player playoff teams out of the total number of teams. Does that make sense? Emily Schmidt: Yeah, it makes sense. my issue is going from twelve to fourteen. So there weren't more teams added when they added two more playoff games from twelve to fourteen. Hilary: Okay. Okay. Emily Schmidt: That's just I don't know. I don't know how you feel. I think six games in the wild card weekend is too many. I used to make sure I would watch all four and I'm like, I can't watch all six. Hilary: Right. It's a lot of Emily Schmidt: Okay, who am I kidding? I watched all six last year. But the year before I did not. I was like, I I'm gonna pick one of these and not watch Hilary: It's a lot of football. Even for me who spends a lot of time watching football, that's a lot of football. Emily Schmidt: It's lot of football. I'm curious, one other thing before we move on from this topic. first of all, I haven't heard from you that have a strong opinion about 14 in the current, but I think the other interesting topic that people debate that I feel a little differently from most people are around the division winners being higher seated than wild card teams when they have worse records. Do you know what I'm talking about? You know, you could have a five hundred team that's a division winner at a higher seed than, a playoff wildcard team. Hilary: you thinking particularly about a division in in the AFC in the South, maybe, where we got to the end of last season and it was Emily Schmidt: Hey, we even the Seahawks, I don't know if you remember, there was a year where we hosted this was the Beast Quake game. we had a really like average record and we hosted the Saints when they had a much better record. And we ended up winning that game. It was at home. That was back when nobody could beat us at home. Hilary: Okay. Emily Schmidt: My feeling I think most people every time this happens like it did last year, people get all up in arms and are like, This shouldn't happen. And I feel differently. I think that winning the division should mean something and you get to host a playoff game. I I don't have a problem with it. That's just me. Hilary: Okay. Okay. I guess I haven't given it a lot of thought. I'll have to think on that one. Emily Schmidt: Okay. Well I guess if it hasn't bothered you till now, maybe it doesn't bother you. Okay. Hilary: Yeah, yeah, I I I guess I'm kinda neutral. I Emily Schmidt: Well, I feel like we've covered most aspects of games. and I think we're ready to rate. Do you feel ready to rate? Hilary: We are I feel ready to rate and I feel good and confident in the ratings that I'm gonna give, but I think that is straight up the ratings I'm going to give are not great. Emily Schmidt: All right, so we rate from the owner's perspective, not that we know any of them, but we're just guessing. And from the player's perspective, we don't know any of them, we're just guessing, but we can rate from the fans confidently. So green, yellow, red, green, we're feeling like we're on track, we're we're achieving all of our goals. Red is like this is bad, we're on a terrible trend, and yellow is somewhere in the middle. So let's start let's do the easy one. The owners. Hilary: I think there's really no doubt from the owner's perspective. They are green means let's go and let's go fast because the revenue is there, the interest is there, they're setting up for continued expansion and excitement around the game. And I think from their perspective, things are pretty good. Green. Emily Schmidt: Yep, they're green. They're getting what they want. They're green. They're getting more and more and more. Players. I was thinking about yellow for them. I don't believe they're okay with playing on these short rest weeks. I don't think they're happy about the push for more games. I think it's just caution. Like I know they are getting more money, which is great for them, but that's just my gut feel. Hilary: Yeah, that's an interesting one. And I would say that because the NFL Players Association has come out publicly and strongly against some of the moves that the NFL is trying to make in connection with expansion of the playoffs and expansion of the number of games per season and that kind of thing. That there's obviously player sentiment that This is not headed in the right direction. At least in the at least in the current format as presented. so Emily Schmidt: All right. Hilary: I think it's a yellow. Emily Schmidt: Okay, we're agreed yellow. from the fan perspective, I've been negative this entire podcast except for one little aspect. I think they do a great job deciding who plays who. It's a red for me. It bothers me that they don't seem to care about the competitive edge, the travel, and I care about the quality of the game and making sure the best team wins streaming. The list goes on and on. And I don't see that it's gonna change. I think it will be red forever unless we start all dropping off and stop watching and they start caring about us again. Hilary: Yeah, th this is a hard one and an easy one, right? And I don't mean to take the easy way out here, but yeah, it's it's a red from the fan experience. And then the minute I say that, I think, well, but I haven't turned off the TV on a Sunday yet, or on a Thursday for that matter, or any other day of the week when I have the time to watch. So it's still addictive to watch. My love of the game is still there and I don't know what it's gonna take for me to not tune in. Whatever it is, it hasn't happened yet. Emily Schmidt: Yeah, same. I mean I'm not turning the T V off either. But I just wish I felt better about it. I would love to love the brand and not be annoyed at the brand that I love so much, if that makes sense. Hilary: I yeah, it does make sense. I and I don't know what the solution is either. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe we just sink our positive energy into our home team and focus on all the great things that are happening as a fan in whatever city you're in with whatever team you're supporting. Emily Schmidt: Okay, well I think we have wrapped up all of our topics for today. I appreciate your time, Hilary. It's always fun to talk to you. Hilary: It's always great to talk to you too, Emily, and I'm looking forward to our next conversation on Unicorn Football Talk.