When football fans think of Thanksgiving, they think of the iconic NFL triple header that happens every fourth Thursday in November.
No one has ever dared to compete with the NFL on Thanksgiving Day, with even the legendary Egg Bowl matchup between Mississippi State and Ole Miss moving to Black Friday, but ESPN’s Paul Finebaum wants college football to try.
Paul Finebaum Urges College Football To Challenge NFL’s Thanksgiving Dominance
On McElroy and Cueblic in the Morning, Finebaum urged college football leaders to push back on the NFL’s dominance saying “To me, you can’t get hung up on the NFL because the NFL has shown that it will follow you no matter where you go, whether it’s Thanksgiving night, whether it’s Friday afternoon on Black Friday, whether it’s against the CFP.”
He’s right. Last season, the NFL had its first-ever Black Friday game air with a Chiefs-Raiders matchup.
Finebaum also explained that the NFL is taking over every holiday, highlighting their recent Christmas Day games on Netflix, saying this about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell:
“He’s not only attacking college football, the biggest thing that Goodell has done with the NFL is Christmas Day. That was always only the NBA, and we have two Christmas Day games now on Netflix. I think it’s too late. So, I just think college football ought to go where they want to go.”
As a diehard college football fan myself, I would love to have a couple of CFB games on Thanksgiving Day. That weekend of college football matters more anyway, as it’s the last week of regular-season college football. I think football fans in general would care more about rivalry week games on Thanksgiving than a week 13 NFL game between the Bears and the Giants.
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While I do agree with Finebaum’s sentiment, the fact of the matter is that this will never happen. The NFL’s viewership dominates the rest of the sports world in the United States, and companies like ESPN would never want to go up against an NFL broadcast.
So while we college football fans can dream, we will probably never see college football on Thanksgiving Day again.
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