Is The NFL Making It Too Difficult To Watch Its Product? [OPINION]

The 2025 NFL schedule was released with much fanfare on Wednesday night. The Minnesota Vikings will play 17 regular season games, with the days of the week, time of day and even the country the games will be played in more variable than ever.

Gone are the days of mostly-Noon starts on Sunday afternoons (in 2011 12 of the Vikings' 17 games were started at Noon on a Sunday). Instead, the Vikings will get just six games this season at Noon on Sunday, One Monday Night Football game (the season opener vs Chicago), two Sunday night games, two Thursday games (one on a Thursday night and one at 3:30 p.m... on Christmas Day), two Sunday overseas games that start at 8:30 a.m. CST and one 3 p.m. Sunday game.

In total the Vikings will play eight games in Minneapolis, seven games against teams in their respective US-based stadiums, one game in Ireland and another in London.

Not only that, but they didn't even bother to schedule a kickoff time for the Week 18 matchup against the Packers. I guess we will just figure that out as we go.

Also gone are the days of most games being on one station, most recently FOX. Instead, games will be spread among ESPN (week one), NBC (week two and again week 15), CBS (week three), NFL Network (weeks four and five), FOX (weeks six, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen and sixteen), Prime Video (week seven) and Netflix for week 17.

One of the best things about the NFL when I was growing up was the anticipation throughout the week, waiting for that game Sunday at Noon or the one time a year you would maybe get to watch your team under the Monday Night Football lights. There wasn't much to plan around, I would just block off 12-3:15 p.m. most Sundays.

Shameless plug, but the easiest way to follow the Vikings may just be on the radio. It's free to listen to and can be found all throughout the state on the same local channel every week.