Beyond Sport: How the NFL impacts American culture

As we patiently await the upcoming 2024 season, it’s an opportune time to look back and appreciate just how deeply the National Football League and all its offerings have become so deeply entrenched in our American way of life. With its origins traced back to modest beginnings, the National Football League (NFL) has grown into a cultural juggernaut, boasting 32 franchises and commanding the attention of millions of fans each season.

This powerhouse not only entertains but molds American society in profound ways, influencing everything from community bonds to national discussions on health and wellness.

Sense of Community and Identity

The NFL’s impact on fostering a sense of community cannot be overstated. It brings people together regardless of age, background, or geographical differences. In cities with NFL teams and even beyond, football transcends mere sport to become a part of the local cultural fabric. Team fans share highs and lows, creating lifelong memories and friendships. This sense of belonging is often passed down through generations, with team loyalty as a family heirloom.

The NFL season, running from September through January, creates a rhythm that millions follow each year. Game days and tailgating are traditions. Watching games with friends and family brings people together. Even those with no interest in football have plans affected by game schedules and Super Bowl parties.

Social Impact

Beyond entertainment, the NFL serves as a potent platform for social change and awareness. The league has been at the center of significant movements, such as San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick’s “Take a Knee” protests, which highlighted issues of racial injustice and police brutality.

The NFL’s wide reach also influences popular culture, introducing terms like “Hail Mary,” “Blind Side,” and “Deflategate” into everyday conversation, and shaping fashion trends with team jerseys and branded merchandise becoming style staples.

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Economic Influence

The NFL is a major economic force, generating approximately $12 billion annually in 2022. This revenue supports not just the players and staff but has a ripple effect on industries such as broadcasting, apparel, and even food and beverage.

Each game is a boon for local economies, with fans flocking to stadiums, hosting tailgate parties, or patronizing local establishments to watch with fellow fans.

The results are in!

The NFL Draft generated long-term, positive impact for years to come. Kansas City’s total economic impact was $164.3 million with:

💲108.8 million in direct spending
💲55.5 million in indirect impact pic.twitter.com/0M1CQ3s6kx

— Mayor Quinton Lucas (@MayorLucasKC) August 25, 2023

Sparking Discussions on Health and Wellness

The NFL plays a pivotal role in shaping health and wellness conversations in America. The rigorous fitness and health regimes of NFL players not only showcase the pinnacle of athletic excellence but also inspire fans to prioritize their own health and fitness. This influence extends beyond mere admiration; it serves as a powerful motivator for fans to engage in regular exercise and healthier lifestyle choices, often in the hope of emulating their favorite athletes.

However, the impact of the NFL on health discussions also delves into more complex issues, particularly the serious health risks associated with contact sports. The career of players like Junior Seau has brought to light the grave consequences of concussions and other related injuries. His and similar cases have sparked widespread debate over safety, influencing parents’ decisions regarding youth sports participation and bringing the discussion into living rooms across the nation. These discussions drive research and policy changes aimed at improving safety across all levels of sport.

Players as Role Models

NFL players often come from diverse backgrounds, bringing stories of struggle, perseverance, and teamwork. These narratives go beyond the field, inspiring children and adults alike to pursue their dreams with determination and resilience.

Consider the story of Michael Oher, whose life and struggles were famously depicted in the film “The Blind Side.” Oher faced homelessness and instability throughout his youth before football provided a pathway to college and eventually to the NFL. His story is a powerful testament to how determination and support can alter one’s destiny.

Players’ philanthropic efforts, such as Houston Texans former player J.J. Watt’s Hurricane Harvey relief fund, further cement their status as community leaders.

Summary

The NFL’s influence extends far beyond the final whistle of any game. It shapes American culture, conversations, and communities, making it more than just a sports league—it’s a pivotal part of the national identity. As the NFL continues to evolve, its deep-rooted impact on American life promises to grow even further, reinforcing its role as a cultural titan.

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To see every game in the 2024 NFL regular season, you'll need NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, Sunday Ticket, NFL Network, ESPN, ESPN+, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and Netflix. https://t.co/Yvd8OaoGQx

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) May 15, 2024

2024 NFL Schedule Announced

Complete 18-Week, 272-Game Regular-Season Schedule Available on NFL.com

For the 2024 NFL regular-season schedule by week, click here.

For the 2024 NFL preseason schedule, click here. 

On May 15, the NFL announced its 18-week, 272-game
regular-season schedule for 2024, which kicks off on Thursday night, September
5, in Kansas City and concludes with 16 division games in Week 18 – two on
Saturday, January 4, and 14 on Sunday, January 5. 

The 2024 NFL schedule, powered by AWS, will feature
each team playing 17 regular-season games and three preseason games for the
fourth consecutive year. The 17th game will feature teams from opposing
conferences that finished in the same standing within their respective
divisions the previous season. The NFC will be the home conference for the 17th
game in 2024. For how opponents were determined for the 2024 season, click here. 

The NFL uses the power of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to
power its schedule-making process. There are approximately a quadrillion
possible schedule combinations each NFL season and over 26,000 factors to take
into consideration such as stadium availability, travel requirements, primetime
games, competitive fairness and division rivalries. The NFL uses AWS to run
high performance computing workloads to find the best possible schedule each
year. For more information, click here. 

The NFL’s 105th season begins with the league’s annual
primetime kickoff game, as the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs
host the Baltimore Ravens at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday,
September 5 (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC) in a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship
Game. 

The two most recent winners of the Most Valuable
Player award, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson (2023) and Kansas City’s Patrick
Mahomes (2022), are scheduled to face off for the sixth time in their careers,
including the postseason. Should both players start as expected, Jackson
(two-time MVP) and Mahomes (two-time MVP) would become the seventh different
pair of quarterbacks to meet in a regular-season game after both players had
won multiple MVP awards. 

The NFL’s primetime kickoff game – which has been an
annual tradition since 2002 – will feature a rematch of one of the previous
season’s conference championship games for only the third time and first since
2010, when New Orleans defeated Minnesota in a rematch of the NFC Championship.
The other instance was 2004, when New England defeated Indianapolis in a
rematch of the AFC Championship.

On Friday, September 6 (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock), the
Green Bay Packers will meet the Philadelphia Eagles at Corinthians Arena in São
Paulo, Brazil, the first-ever regular season NFL game to be played in South
America. It will mark the first time the NFL has played a game on Friday of
their opening weekend in over 50 years, when the St. Louis Cardinals and Los
Angeles Rams met on September 18, 1970.

Week 1 continues on CBS at 4:05 PM ET, with two head
coaches making their Week 1 debut with their club as Antonio Pierce and the Las
Vegas Raiders visit Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers in an AFC West
showdown, while Super Bowl-winning head coach Sean Payton and the Denver
Broncos travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks, where Mike Macdonald will make
his NFL head coaching debut.

On FOX at 4:25 PM ET, the Dallas Cowboys visit theCleveland Browns in a matchup of two 2023 playoff teams and the Washington Commanders, under new head coach Dan Quinn, travel to take on the reigning NFC South champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Later that day, NBC’s Sunday Night Football begins with Mathew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams visiting Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions (8:20 p.m. ET), in a rematch of last season’s NFC Wild Card round, in which the Lions earned their first playoff victory since 1991.

NBCwill televise one game each Sunday night in Weeks 1-17. Additionally,  NBC will feature Miami at Green Bay (8:20 p.m. ET) on Thanksgiving night as well as Houston at Kansas City (1 p.m. ET) on Saturday in Week 16. Kickoff Weekend concludes on Monday, September 9, with ESPN/ABC’s Monday Night Football, featuring Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets visiting Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers (8:15 p.m. ET).

YouTube TV is the presenting sponsor of Kickoff Weekend, inclusive of the entire Thursday through Monday slate. ESPN will televise one game each Monday night in Weeks 1-17 and will be simulcast on ABC in Weeks 1, 8, 14 and 17. In Weeks 3 and 4, there will be two Monday night games with broadcasts at 7:30 p.m. ET and 8:15 p.m. ET. In Week 7, there will be two Monday night games, with Baltimore at Tampa Bay on ESPN at 8:15 p.m. ET and the Los Angeles Chargers at Arizona on ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET. In Week 15, the two Monday night games begin 30 minutes apart, with Chicago at Minnesota at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Atlanta at Las Vegas at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Additionally, ESPN/ABC will air two games with playoff implications on the Saturday of Week 18, January 4, at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET. These games will be selected following the conclusion of Week 17.

There will be no Monday night game on the final regular-season weekend (Week 18) to provide more flexibility for the scheduling of the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs. Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Prime Video, kicking off its slate in Week 2 with an AFC East matchup as the Miami Dolphins host the Buffalo Bills (8:15 p.m. ET).

Prime Video will broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games between Weeks 2-17 (excluding Thanksgiving night) and exclusively stream the second-ever NFL Black Friday game when the Kansas City Chiefs host the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 13 (3 p.m. ET). 

The first-ever NFL games streamed on Netflix will be played on Christmas, Wednesday, December 25, in Week 17, as the Kansas City Chiefs visit the Pittsburgh Steelers (1 p.m. ET) and the Baltimore Ravens travel to face the Houston Texans (4:30 p.m. ET).

Additionally, Netflix will stream at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026. NFL Network will exclusively televise seven games – four international games and three games in Week 17 on Saturday, December 28. The NFL schedule features five international regular-season games – three in the UK, one in Germany and one in Brazil, marking the first-ever regular-season NFL game to be played in South America.

As part of the league’s expansion of the regular season to 17 games, it was determined that, beginning with the 2022 season, teams from the conference whose teams were eligible for a ninth regular-season home game would be among the designated group to play a neutral-site international game each year. The international slate begins in Week 1 in Brazil with Green Bay and Philadelphia (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock) and follows with games in three consecutive weeks, beginning in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Week 5 with the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network).

In Week 6, Jacksonville meets Chicago (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before the London action shifts to Wembley Stadium in Week 7, when the Jaguars will meet the New England Patriots (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). The Jaguars are scheduled to play two regular-season games outside of the United States for the second-consecutive season. As part of the league’s commitment to playing regular-season games in Germany, the NFL will conclude the international slate of games in Munich in Week 10 as the New York Giants meet the Carolina Panthers (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). It will mark the league’s second game in Munich at Allianz Arena – Home of FC Bayern Munich and the fourth international regular-season game to be played in Germany. 

The Madden Thanksgiving Celebration will feature a tripleheader on Thursday, November 28. The first game will feature a pair of NFC North foes, as the Bears travel to Detroit to face the Lions (12:30 p.m. ET, CBS). The late afternoon game will match two NFC East rivals, as the New York Giants visit the Dallas Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET, FOX). The Thanksgiving Day festivities end with the Miami Dolphins traveling to Green Bay to face the Packers on NBC (8:20 p.m. ET). The regular season will conclude with Week 18 on Saturday, January 4, and Sunday, January 5. For the 15th consecutive year, all 16 games scheduled for the final week of the season are division contests, enhancing the potential for more games with playoff
ramifications. 

The NFL’s 32 teams will each play 17 games over 18 weeks. Byes will begin in Week 5 and end in Week 14. Additional 2024 schedule notes: Fourteen games will be Super Bowl rematches and nine 2024 games are rematches from the 2023 playoffs, including Super Bowl LVIII (Kansas City at San Francisco in Week 7), both Championship Games (Baltimore at Kansas City in Week 1; Detroit at San Francisco in Week 17) and all four Divisional playoff games (Tampa Bay at Detroit in Week 2; Kansas City at Buffalo in Week 11; San Francisco at Green Bay in Week 12; Baltimore at Houston in Week 17).

The top-two picks in the 2024 NFL Draft, Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, are scheduled to meet in Week 8 when the Chicago Bears visit the Washington Commanders (1 p.m. ET, CBS). Should both players start, it would mark the sixth game in NFL history between rookie starting quarterbacks selected with the first and second overall picks in the NFL Draft. Williams and the Bears are also slated to play against No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye and the New England Patriots in Week 10 (1 p.m. ET, FOX) and No. 4 overall pick Marvin Harrison and the Arizona Cardinals in Week 9 (4:05 p.m. ET, CBS). 

The NFL will continue to use “flexible scheduling” this season to ensure exciting and meaningful games are available for viewing by the largest number of fans. For up-to-date information about “flexible scheduling” for the 2024 season, please visit https://www.nfl.com/schedules/flexible-scheduling-procedures. 

As in prior seasons, for Week 18, the final weekend of the season, the scheduling of the Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday night games is not assigned. In Week 18, two games will be played on Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET) with the remainder to be played on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. ET) and one matchup to be played on Sunday night (8:20 p.m. ET). Specific dates, start times, and networks for Week 18 matchups will be determined and announced following the conclusion of Week 17. Introduced in 2020 and continuing for a fifth-consecutive year, a total of 14 teams – seven each in the American and National Football Conferences – will make the postseason. The No. 1 seed in
each conference will receive a bye in the Wild Card round. The remaining division champions in each conference with the best records will be seeded 2, 3, and 4, followed by the next three teams per conference with the best records seeded 5, 6, and 7. Since 1990 – a streak of 34 consecutive seasons – at least four new teams have qualified for the playoffs that missed the postseason the year before, including seven of the 14 playoff teams in 2022. AFC and NFC Wild Card games will feature the 2 seed hosting the 7 seed, the 3 seed hosting the 6 seed and the 4 seed hosting the 5 seed. 

Super Wild Card Weekend presented by Verizon for the 2024 season will feature six games, starting on Saturday, January 11.  Wild Card winners join the top seeds in each conference in the Divisional Playoffs, presented by Intuit TurboTax, on Saturday and Sunday, January 18-19. The AFC and NFC Championship Games, presented by Intuit TurboTax, will be played on Sunday, January 26. The winners meet two weeks later on Sunday, February 9, in Super Bowl LIX at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome (FOX), marking the 11th time the league’s final game will be played in New Orleans. 

The NFL is the only sports league that presents all regular-season and postseason games on free, over-the-air television in local markets. All postseason games are distributed nationally. 

Westwood One will broadcast on radio all NFL primetime games, the three Thanksgiving Day games and the entire NFL playoffs. SiriusXM subscribers will have access to every live NFL game, as well as exclusive 24/7 talk channel coverage on SXM NFL Radio. All live and local prime time games
will be available to stream on mobile devices with NFL+. 

Individual game tickets will go on sale immediately through Ticketmaster, the Official Ticketing Partner of the NFL, once each game is announced. Tickets will also go on sale through SeatGeek and Sports Illustrated Tickets, members of the NFL Ticket Network.

For more information, visit NFL.com/tickets. 

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(Cover photo, Image credit: RDW Productions)

Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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