The NFL Draft is tonight and the selection of players out of college will see more viewers than nearly every baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey game in this country this year. The NFL does a great job making themselves the center of the sports world and with multiple national sports networks such as NBC Sports and Fox Sports One (don't for get the big E dogz) the NFL can't produce enough content to package and sell for multi-million dollar deals.
So here's idea for the next broadcasting package: start broadcasting training camp inter-squad scrimmages. College's have been doing this for years. It's call the Spring game. Some of them draw huge crowds, many are nationally televised. Some of them, like the one I recently attended at my favorite school Appalachian State, utilize an Offense vs Defense model where scoring is set up in a Fantasy Football style scoring system like the following:
Offense:
6-touchdown
3-field goal
2-Run of 15+ yards
2-pass of 20+ yards
1-First down
1-PAT
Defense
6-Touchdown
5-Turnover
3-three-and-out
3-Blocked kick
2-Any stopped drive that isn't a three-and-out
2-2-pt conversion after defensive TD
1-PAT after defensive TD
Post the scores on the bottom of the TV screen for viewers, post the estimated numbers of plays left. Advertise it as a way to scout your Fantasy Football team. The NFL could package the scrimmages these national sports-stations desperate for content and would love a piece of the NFL pie. They would be out of the way enough that causal NFL fans can ignore them(maybe they will be on ESPN8) but easy enough to get a hold of that the die-hards could consume hours and hours of more NFL content.
People would watch it. Networks would pay mad money to get the rights. Teams are already doing Scrimmages such as these. This seems like a no brainier.
If you don't think people would watch practices on TV then go back to the golden days of boxing. In the early days of television there were times when stations would broadcast nightly practice of the heavyweight champion preparing for his next big fight. People ate it up! Ali use to travel the country selling out large arena for practices. Yes Were Talking about Practice!
