Why Doesn't the NFL Play on Saturday All Season Long?

When you think of the NFL, Sunday springs to mind. Sure, there are some games on Monday (and, more recently, Thursday), but most of the action is concentrated on a single weekend day.

But, toward the end of the NFL season, that changes. Once winter arrives, NFL fans can bundle up on the couch and tune in to professional contests on Saturday and Sunday.

And given how popular the league is—we're talking about a nearly $12 billion organization that dominates the sports landscape—you might be wondering why those Saturday games are so rare. Surely, football fans would watch the NFL whenever it was scheduled, right?

Well, the answer comes down to a legal standard set in 1961.

Let's travel back in time and check it out.

No Saturdays Before Mid-December

These days, big-time television deals are the norm for sports leagues. There was a time, however, when those sorts of arrangements were a bit unusual.

As laid out in Sports Business Journal, the NFL agreed to a league-wide broadcast deal in 1961, with Commissioner Pete Rozelle aiming to help smaller-market teams keep up with the clubs in major metropolitan areas. A federal judge, however, ruled that the deal was unacceptable on antitrust grounds.

Rozell didn't give up, though, and lobbied to get what became the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) of 1961 passed. The act changed the face of North American sports.

Television deals, like the one the NFL had struck down, were essentially exempted from antitrust rules, but a certain framework still applied. And one section of the document explains why professional football usually isn't seen on Saturdays.

Without directly parsing through all of the legalities, the SBA's allowances don't apply if a game kicks off on Friday night or Saturday "during the period beginning on the second Friday of September and the second Saturday of December in any year from any telecasting station located within seventy-five miles of the game site of any intercollegiate or interscholastic football contest scheduled to be played on such a date." There are certain criteria those college games have to meet, but today's big-time NCAA football easily checks those boxes.

That arrangement, in theory, provides somewhat of a balance. If the NFL is able to have TV deals that would otherwise violate antitrust regulations, the league can't use that privilege to blanket the entire country with broadcasts. Protecting Fridays and Saturdays allows high school and college football a chance to shine without being overshadowed.

But, as the document says, the NFL can slip into that space in December once the NCAA's regular season ends.

Can it be a bit confusing from a TV-watching perspective when professional games start filling unusual Saturday timeslots? Sure, but no NFL fan is going to pass up a bit more football to watch and a signal that we're within touching distance of the playoffs.