The NFL has laid claim to Christmas. Its arrival was inevitable

Martin Rogers

FOX Sports Insider

The list of things proven incapable of stopping the National Football League when it sets its sights on something is monumentally large. It includes but is not restricted to the following items — all related to Christmas.

There’s Santa Claus and his linebacker girth, and turkey and trimmings, the weather … no matter how frosty, the Lakers and the Celtics and all manner of basketball superstars, board games, card games, fireside singalongs, and anything else that could reasonably be considered a distraction on a late December afternoon.

Christmas has fallen and the NFL has claimed it, a process that began a few years ago and was confirmed beyond all doubt on Tuesday with the announcement that pro football will indeed take place on Dec. 25, 2024.

This particular Christmas Day sits on a Wednesday, the most non-footballing of all days, which had led many to speculate whether Roger Goodell and his crew might put a temporary hold on their ever-increasing ramp-up of Yuletide action.

Not so.

The NFL wants your holiday eyeballs, and if that means midweek mixing of the schedule as late as Week 16, so be it.

It used to be Any Given Sunday, but when Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs begin their bid for a three-peat once hostilities reconvene in September, they will do so in a season with action on every day except Tuesday, on account of the Christmas addition, the recent Black Friday innovation and the late-season Saturdays once college football slows down.

Basketball, via the NBA, used to think it owned Christmas Day, and it had every right to believe that, given how it normally carried a monopoly and would stack its most delectable treats on the festive schedule, with the biggest teams, starriest players and glossiest matchups. That’s why Kobe Bryant didn’t have a Christmas Day off for two decades, and LeBron James’ Christmas history has gone a similar way.

But then, suddenly, its grip was gone, perhaps never to return.

If you think this seems like the NFL flexing its muscles and running over the competition, you’d be right. That’s exactly what it is, and it is doing it for the most obvious reason of all — because viewers want it to.

Skip believes NFL Christmas games now reign over the NBA

Of all the days of the year, people tend to do exactly what they desire on Christmas Day. Last year, incredible numbers chose to watch football, with a trio of games on display across three networks.

The NFL tried to avoid Christmas forever. Everyone just wanted to hang out at home, it seemed, despite the monetary bonanza that slipped by. Perhaps there were doubts about whether sufficient numbers of people were prepared to spend three Christmas hours in a stadium or a similar amount of time glued to the television.

Guess what? They are.

The league dipped its toe in with a Christmas Day game in 2020, then came back for two more a year later. Two triple-headers followed, meaning nine games over the past four campaigns, on a Friday, a Saturday, a Sunday and a Monday.

Last season’s games drew monstrous ratings, with the New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Eagles clash on FOX averaging 29 million viewers. Good luck stopping that kind of momentum.

“(What) we’ve seen the last couple years is really some unprecedented growth, and not just on Christmas, on Thanksgiving, too,” NFL VP of media distribution Hans Schroeder told reporters at the league’s annual meeting on Tuesday.

“The last couple of years have had the highest (-rated) regular-season game ever viewed in the regular season. That mindset, that opportunity, that belief we have that football brings people together — that’s even truer on these big holidays that happen throughout the year.”

We occasionally overcomplicate things. But the basic truth in this case is that Christmas football works, because it fits.

It is the kind of television fare that, in many households, will not be the root of many arguments, given that football is so overwhelmingly popular that a vast proportion of the population likes it at least on some level.

It can be watched before dinner, during dinner, after dinner. It can be background noise or the central focus of everyone’s gaze, and you can even drop off to it if you’ve had too much turkey and hope someone will give you a nudge if overtime looms.

It isn’t the sport of Wednesday, or Sunday, or any day in particular. Not anymore. It is the sport that will be watched no matter what, whenever it is on, and to some degree whoever is playing, the target of an appetite so great even all those holiday meals can’t satisfy it.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX and subscribe to the daily newsletter.