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The NFL is indeed discussing the possibility of playing games on Saturdays in the event that college football doesn't proceed with a season from September through December. As one source with direct knowledge of the discussions tells PFT, nonetheless, the league'due south potent preference is for college football to happen, as scheduled.

No college football game flavor or a delayed season (a February-May scenario has been mentioned) would dramatically complicate the NFL's power to watch players in advance of the 2021 draft.

"If there were to be no season, then we are going to have to scout off of either these guys' freshman and sophomore tape only or freshman, sophomore, junior tape if they were going to exist a rising senior," Bills Thousand.M. Brandon Beane recently said on the #PFTPM podcast.

If there's no college season, some otherwise typhoon-eligible players may make up one's mind to stick around for 2021, assuming that they'd get an extra year of eligibility given that there was, yous know, no flavor in 2020. Others, similar Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, would likely say "run across ya" to Sat football game, even after spending but two seasons there. (On that point, it would be interesting to see whether the NFL and NFLPA agree to extend the artificial 3-year bulwark to entry into the draft, forcing players like Lawrence to await another year — and in turn to assist college football make up for the money it would have lost in 2020.)

If the college football game flavour plays out from February to May, the NFL would have to delay the draft, which would in plow delay the availability of players to join the offseason programme, and which also would dramatically restrict the pre-typhoon evaluation procedure. It also would raise a very real question as to whether players who finished a football season in May should exist expected to offset another one in September.

So the best-instance scenario for the NFL entails college football games being played during college football season. But if that tin can't happen, the NFL would indeed attempt to backfill Saturdays with games that otherwise would be played on Sundays.

Equally the source explained it, that most likely would entail making specific games available on Saturdays exclusively via Amazon Prime or ESPN+, with streaming platforms paying a premium for content that would entice zealous NFL fans to in turn pay the premium necessary to watch the games. Those games would be removed from the Fob and CBS Sunday inventory, with the networks receiving a rebate (which would come up in handy this year, given reduced advertizing acquirement) and with the NFL expecting to make back that greenbacks and more via the next wave of circulate deals.

It'south also possible that the league would expand its in-house Game Pass characteristic to include alive Sat games, selling the content direct to consumers who would, given the absence of college football, quite possibly fork over the kind of collective greenbacks that the traditional broadcast networks couldn't or wouldn't for Saturday games.

However it plays out, don't expect to meet Saturdays play out similar Sundays, with complimentary content on 3-alphabetic character networks (except in the home markets of the teams who play on Saturdays). The broadcast networks but won't want to purchase those extra games, because it will be nigh incommunicable to for the circulate networks turn a profit in the current climate.

None of it matters unless and until it becomes clear that higher football game won't happen. Given the factors that make the league confident that the NFL flavor volition go on as scheduled, it'southward reasonable to think that college football would be able to happen, too. And that's the strongly preferred consequence both for college football game and for the NFL.