Fans who have been waiting patiently for the release of the 2015 NFL schedule will be rewarded Tuesday when the league announces its regular season slate as part of a two-hour television special.
Home and away opponents have been known for weeks now, but not the order in which the games will be played.
On Tuesday, the league is going to draw out that announcement and milk it for as many viewers as it can.
While the NFL would have you believe it's simply a friendly attempt to give the fans what they want, the television announcement is, in truth, the kind of self-serving call for attention that no one wants and no one needs.
When ESPN and the College Football Playoff partnered this past season to announce each week's rankings as part of a half-hour television event, I was skeptical. Wouldn't it be easier and less self-aggrandizing to just post the rankings on the internet rather than draw it out for the sake of anxiety?
In the end, the event worked mostly because they didn't needlessly inject drama and anticipation. The show opened with a brief explanation of the week's context and then immediately launched into a live release of the top teams.
With the way the NFL has set up its event, a two-hour block which will air on the league's own network, that doesn't seem to be the plan for the schedule release.
Mostly likely the program will painstakingly sift through team by team, revealing tiny morsels that will appeal to one team's fan base at a time. It will be long, dull and likely frustrating.
In a way, it makes sense that the NFL would do this. Far and away the nation's highest-grossing and most popular sports league, the NFL did take a serious PR hit this past season with the rash of off-field scandals it faced.
Filling the offseason with as many of these puff events is a clear and dedicated move to rebuild some of that good standing with fans and casual observers alike.
But in this instance, the league office has gone a step over the line.
Honestly, no one cares about the fanfare that will come with a schedule release. We as fans just want to know who we're playing when. We want to start planning trips to games. We want to start looking at plane tickets and hotel prices and barreling our way through the Internet's swath of ticketing sites to get the best seats at the best price.
We don't need a bunch of talking heads breaking down a Week 7 matchup between the Bills and Dolphins. We don't need a bunch of deep-voiced narrators making the hair on the back of our necks stand up. We don't need the annoying commercial breaks, the over-the-top visual effects and the high tech studio.
Enough with the nonsense, NFL, just give us the games.
Reach the columnist at Ian.C.Beck@asu.edu or follow @ICBeck21 on Twitter.
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