Hig and everybody. I'm Dan Hord and thanks for downloading the Bengals Booth Podcast. Duh, I know there's an answer addition, as NFL Executive Vice President Hans Schroeder joins me to discuss a wide variety of topics, including why the Bengals are playing a night game in Baltimore for the fourth year in a row, and the possibility of the NFL
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provider of the Bengals. Now here's a quick reminder that you can have the latest edition of this podcast delivered right to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. It's the greatest thing since a pull through parking spot. For me, one of the simple joys in life is when you're looking for a spot in a busy lot and you not only find one, but have the opportunity to drive through that spot right into another open one that allows you to exit in
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Wednesday's schedule release. I was among many Bengals fans who questioned the fairness of Cincinnati having a play a night game in Baltimore for the fourth year in a row and the third straight time on a Thursday. So I discussed it the next day with one of the NFL executives involved in putting together the schedule. The league's executive vice president of Media Distribution, Hans Schroeder, ods, I appreciate you joining me on the Bengals Booth podcast. You have Cincinnati ties, correct, I.
Do, Dan.
I am a proud Cincinnati and I grew up most of my life there. My dad was born in Cincinnati in thirty six and lived most of his years in Cincinnati. Went to Withrow and he played football at University of Cincinnati, and I went to high school in Cincinnati, played football at Sinsid Country Day, and then played football Princeton University after that. So a lot of ties back to the Queen City.
Did you attend a lot of Bengals games as a kid, and if so, do you have a favorite memory.
We did attend a few, you know, there was one game in particular, it was right around the Christmas time, I think against the Vikings that stood out. I just I don't know why that was so memorable. The other one that was very memorable in a different way was I think would have been the eighty seven strike season. We were at the game the week before the strike, I think, where they were ahead against the Niners. At
the end of the game. We were with friends. We left early thinking the victory was in the books, and then we got to the car and heard what had happened at the tail end in that last minute touchdown I think till Jerry Rice at.
The end of that game. So the different highs and lows.
I think we won that Vikings game, and that was another game that that broke the other way.
So I think the Vikings game you're talking about they won on a field goal at the gun by Doug Pelfrey, and the forty nine Ers game they won that they lost. Sam White famously went for it on fourth down the Bengals in their own territory, thinking they could like run around in the backfield and kill the remaining clock. They didn't. It gave the forty nine Ers one last chance touchdown pass to Jerry Rice.
Not a great memory, but they're all fun.
As a kid, going to an NFL game and being able to go to a football game like that was always special. Even though Dad coached and was around the game a lot, it was always just that magical experience of walking into an NFL stadium.
All Right, we appreciate you joining us on the podcast to talk about the NFL schedule. We have established your Cincinnati bonafide, so I think I can get right to the biggest gripe that Bengals fans have after seeing the schedule release. This is the fourth straight year that the Bengals are going to play a night game in Baltimore. It's the third straight year that the game is on
a Thursday night. It's obviously tough to win under those circumstances. Now, I think we all get you've got thirty two teams to satisfy. It's impossible to come up with a complete fairness when you put the schedule together. But was there an effort made to try to avoid having that happened for the fourth year in a row.
There, you know, there was, And look, we look at things over time year to year. Things are going to happen. They may happen a couple of years in a row, but we were certainly aware of that. We were also aware of being on the road a lot recently in prime time, particularly against division opponents, and those were things we looked at some options along the way, and certainly saw some schedules with different mixes of prime time for the Bengals. But I think then, like what we tried
to look at is the totality of it. And you know, one of the things the Bengals have done over the last four or five years has played their way onto the national stage, and I think their schedule reflects that. You see that across their primetime windows, but you also see that across the doubleheaders and them being featured with Green Bay and featured in Buffalo and featured with Detroit, which those are also really big wins for us, are our biggest windows across the ear and so we certainly
saw it. We saw it when we were in Baltimore again, and I'll come back to Thanksgiving in a second, but we also saw the totality of the schedule, and I think if you look at the Bengals, no three game road trips, you know they're away obviously have this this year just based on who they play, the shortest travel time of any team in the league, which hopefully makes your life a.
Little bit easier.
But you know, every team looks at things differently, but we thought there was a really nice mix of being on the road.
Being at home.
You know, different teams will look at when they're in Green Bay or when they're in Miami. You know, you're in Green Bay a little bit earlier this year, you're in Miami a little bit later. Teams will probably sort of like that based on the weather and the dynamics or otherwise, and so well, ultimately we were a little
bit more focused on the right overall schedule. You know, we saw some schedules late for Cincinnati that had a three game road trip in it for an example, and again Visa VI this schedule, we thought this was a better overall schedule for the club. But seeing that again they're in four primes, I think threer on the road. You know, we're mindful of that, and I think as we get into next year will probably be even a little bit more forceful on how we think about that.
But overall, we really like the Bengals schedule, like we try to do for all thirty two teams, and be really fair and make sure we're not doing anything to disrupt the competitive aspect. The last thing I'd say then on Thanksgiving specifically, Look, we went into the year. Thanksgiving has become such a big day for NFL fans and food,
family football, and you can see across that day. We saw last year there are forty million viewers that tuned into Detroit's game in Chicago against Chicago after two thirty.
The highest few regular season games ever are that four to thirty game in Dallas, and so we saw there as an opportunity with a lot of really good matchups this year to really try to cater to our fans we know are tuning in and really big and high levels that day, and so we put our thumb on the scale to try to get really great matchups across
that Thanksgiving Day and into Black Friday too. And so one thing I'd say to the Cincinnati fans is, you know, a lot of that's a sign of where the Bengals have come and played too.
They've played their way into prime.
They played their way into the biggest stages in primetime on Thanksgiving nights one of those.
No doubt about it. And in fairness, the Bengals do have a Thursday night home game against the Steelers this year, so they do have an AFC North primetime game at home, which they hadn't had for a few years. I just want to quickly get back to the Baltimore thing, though, final question on that topic. This might be overly simplistic on my part, but couldn't they simply have been flip flopped Bengals at home. I'm Thanksgiving against Baltimore Ravens in Cincinnati at one o'clock two weeks later.
Look, we looked at we certainly saw some configurations like that and flipped again, it's it's solving for a really complex puzzle with all and how the different pieces come together and in this one and where the final one that we like the best for everybody. But I will tell you for Cincinnati too, we like their schedule with this configuration a little bit better. But I think we totally get it, We totally hear it. You know, we'll
try to mix that up. I think, you know, great example, green Bay has been on the road to start the year a lot of straight years.
You see him at home this year.
So there's things that when we've seen that happen for an extended period, and I think we're getting close to that with the Thursday night in Baltimore. I think that we'll, you know, we'll look at that maybe a little bit differently in the future, but we really like the overall schedule this year for Cincinnati.
NFL Executive vice President Hans Schroeder is our guest. You have seven media partners. Now, do those media partners say we want a Joe Burrow game.
Yes.
Yeah, that's a simple and straightforward question. And Joe is obviously incredible and in that you know, handful of of you know, best quarterbacks in the league, but there's a lot more to it. You know, they're they're an exciting you know last year you know No. Nine and eight, but a lot of really exciting games. I mean, both those Ravens games are super exciting. The Commander's game on
Monday Night super exciting. They're a fun team to watch, and so yeah, they're definitely a team that that partners asked for, and partners are excited when they see them on their schedule, and I think they're on you know, put aside that the one offs of of maybe Christmas Day, I think you know, you'll see the Bengals across to all our partners or at least all our major days
like a Thanksgiving too. So they're on Amazon, They're on Monday Night, They're on Sunday Night, They're on both Box and CBS's key big double headers going across the entire country. I think in back to back weeks weeks five and six against Detroit and then coming back in Lambeau the next week, those are our biggest dude windows of the of the weeks. So definitely you see that interest across our partners.
I read today that more than four thousand computers are involved and trying to put together as close to a perfect schedule as you possibly can. What are the things that you input that you try to avoid. You referenced trying to avoid three game road trips, that's obviously one. What are the some of the things that you're trying to get those computers to avoid.
You know, it starts with the really basics. Every stadium across the league has certain dates for whatever reasons, they're just not available. So Cincinnati is a great one. Almost every year we have a weekend or two early in the year where the Reds are at home, and that's a challenging date.
For us to play Cincinnati at home.
So think about that first lens of we go in and say, here are the dates we just can't play right, and then you layer on things like travel and sort of again, we mentioned three game road trips or things we like to avoid. We're never perfect. I think this year's final schedule had three of those. But we look to avoid things like teams playing on the road road
after a Monday night. You know, we try not to have teams be on the road, traveling home, getting late to their facility Monday night, back on the road the following Sunday, try to put them at home on Thursday night. We have certain geographic distances, you know, we can't play and don't play three time zone travel and trips, so that limits who and where and where you can play on a Thursday night. Again, we try to look across the year with division opponents and sprinkle those up when
and where and look at the pairings. Again, this isn't necessarily an AFC North the issue, but you know, one of the things we liked about the schedule this year is in the NFC East is an example, Washington and Dallas had played each other in Week eighteen the last three or four years in a row. We remixed that up this year and changed the shuffle. So we look at some things like that. There's bye weeks and trying to be equitable for the bye weeks all but also
see where they're short weeks with Thursdays fall. There's the European and the international travel that gets layered on there, and so it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle as all those different things come together. Then trying to make sure, like you said, we get teams into different partners packages as well. So that's another limitation Okay, I want to make sure I see Cincinnati in a Thursday night, in a Monday night, in a Sunday night. So all those things sort of go into the soup of how the
computer has to think about it. Computers only as smart as we ask it to be, with the rules and the things we act, you know, we asked it to do. But all those factors are things we asked them to wait and include in the schedules they output to us.
And you referenced international games. I was a little bit surprised the Bengals weren't selected to play in an international game this year. Katie Blackburn has already come out and said publicly that she expects to host one in twenty twenty seven, the next time the Bengals have nine home games. If that's the case, does it make it less likely that the Bengals would play as a road team next year, knowing there's a high probability there'll be a home team the year after.
Nope.
In fact, we saw a lot of schedules this year that had the Bengals playing in international games. We saw a lot that had them. I know, there was a lot of speculation for some reason, and maybe Joe said it at.
Some point, but I think maybe I saw along the way.
Yeah, So the mayor of Madrid came out publicly and said that Cincinnati was going to be Miami's opponent. We don't know where the mayor of Madrid got that, but it led to all this speculation that somehow that had been leaked to the mayor and it was going to happen.
So that's a great example, right of how this all ties together. And this isn't a hard and fast rule, but one of the things that we saw with just how the timing laid out was if the Bengals, which were very very much a candidate to go to Madrid, if they went to Madrid, then they would come home, have a week, and then potentially be on the road
on a short day Thursday. Because we really liked that idea, not that it had to necessarily be Baltimore, but like the idea of Cincinnati in primetime on Thanksgiving Night, particularly with Baltimore, given those games when you stitch it all together, then we weren't going to necessarily make them go to Madrid, come back, have one week, and then play a short
week Thursday. We were allowed to do it but it was one of the things we just felt, you know what, for the right schedule for them, probably something we avoid this year. So great example of how these things connect to one another, and sort of the Thanksgiving Thursday probably definitively impacted how we were thinking about them in Madrid, But they were certainly a candidate and will certainly be a candidate again next year for international slate of games.
This is only the second time the Bengals have played on Thanksgiving, and the previous time was a long time ago twenty ten. Was that one of the things that you considered, Hey, I have not had that team on Thanksgiving in a long long time.
For sure, And look, I think it's such a big stage now for us, you know, it has to be a game and a matchup that we feel good about as that threshold. But then we also love, you know, the traditions in Detroit and Dallas are awesome. I mean, even for somebody that's not from either place, it feels like Thanksgiving. It feels like watching John Matten back in the day covering a game, like they feel naturally organic
to Thanksgiving into the NFL and the football. But we also love the fact that we can rotate that primetime game around and it can go to different places and other markets. Green Bay last year was one of them. As an example, that felt like a really cool way to end Thanksgiving Thursday of football in Lambeau. Like again, it feels like a really great football game to Baltimore in a Rayvends Bengals game.
How you're ending Thanksgiving night? That feels very special.
I know NBC is thrilled to have that game to end that day, but yeah, we try to rotate and get different exposures, whether it's there or now we have Black Friday, now we have Christmas. You know it is delivered for us. We wanted different teams to host some things will play on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, but wanted to mix that up a little bit, give different teams the opportunity to host on Christmas. So definitely something we look at.
NFL Executive VP Hunts Schroeder is our guest. Last year, the Bengals played Dallas in a game that featured an alternative Simpsons telecast. Will there be something similar this year? And do you try to pick different teams every year for those special productions?
Definitely do the latter, and you know that was something we came up with a couple of years ago. We really like Disney has been an awesome partner, first with the Toy Story experience and then last year with the Simpsons experience. Probably not going to be in Cincinnati game again this year. I think your Monday night game for that game on is side by side where you're in Denver alongside another game that we so we'll probably look to do something else for another Monday Night game with
Disney throughout the year. But for us, those are really fun ways to take football and present the differently it's available, and it ultimately goes available to ninety plus countries around the world, and to take sort of that ip that Disney has, that's really fun to marry it to an NFL game, to use the next gen stats platform that we have, just a different and fun expression of the game.
So we thought it was really cool last year. The Bengals were great to work with and that game, obviously if you're a Cincinnati fan, was really special with how it ended and seeing I think was it Barter was at least that was playing Jamar with that touchdown down the sideline to sort of bring it home was just a fun way when you saw the replays of that were pretty cool.
Yeah, it's the only time in Bengals history that they had their own punt blocked and that enabled them to win the game when Dallas kind of botched the recovery of the block punt. I'm always in intrigued cons by things that we don't even think about that impact the NFL schedule. Are there any big concert tours or other unusual events that pose challenges this year?
There's always something, and there's always something you know there you hit on some of them, the concerts. Some of them are baseball stadiums and shared parking lots. Some of it are marathons, right. Some of it you never know what the events and where it's going to be. Sometimes it's an international soccer game or something that that's happening. Sometimes it's college football based on some of those buildings. So you know, there's a handful of things that that
all can factor into that. You know, our buildings are incredible facilities or incredible facilities for football. You know, they're incredible facilities for other events that oftentimes our clubs do really good jobs. Are giving us the flexibility so we can try to get to the best NFL schedule we can, but there's certainly a handful of other things that will pop up from time to time, and all of a sudden you find and sale kid as a handful of dates here or there.
We just can't get into it a building.
I don't know if this topic crosses your desk or not, but I'll ask the question anyway. The Bengals in the city of Cincinnati are hoping to host the Draft in twenty twenty eight or shortly after that. As a city that doesn't have a dome and therefore will probably never host a Super Bowl, does that increase the chances of Cincinnati potentially hosting the Draft?
Look, I would certainly hope, so, you know one to you know, I'm not super close to how we choose locations today, but I will say one of my projects earlier in my career was leading the work that led to us to take the Draft on the road and so put the Draft in Chicago the first year, and so was intimately involved in sort of driving that and leading this to do that, obviously with the Commissioner's overall
guidance in leadership. But you know, I caninue to be amazed and it's just so cool with that event's become to see in even Green Bay, Wisconsin, hundreds of thousands of people and those visuals of what the draft looks like over those three days is spectacular. And to your point earlier, you know, I'm not sure we're going to get to every market for a super Bowl, but the
Draft is an event. I think we've done a great job with it to day about how we take that to different NFL markets and how we give fans in those markets, not only in that direct city, but it's amazing how fans travel from all different areas around to come in for that Draft weekend. And I think knowing the city, knowing what we do for great events, not
only sporting events. Octoberfest in the fall is obviously a big what they do big of an opening day for the Reds like we do big events well in Cincinnati, and I think they do an incredible job with the Draft. So I'll leave it to my colleagues as they work through that process, but certainly something I love seeing is how we go to different markets nique ways and to draft the great event to do that with.
If Cincinnati can get a draft and a Thursday night home game against Baltimore. You will get no complaints from the fans in your hometown.
Noted.
I'll make sure I share that back with the team, so I'll take my graters next time I come into town.
Make sure it's okay, Tomes.
I really appreciate your time. This has been informative and fun for me. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you Dad anytime, Take care, stay well, and really appreciate you having me on.
That's going to do it for this episode of the Bengals Booth Podcast, brought to you by pay Core, Proud to be the Bengals official HR software provider, by Alta Fiber future proof fiber Internet designed to elevate your home, business and community to a new level, and by Kettering Health the best care for the best fans. Kettering Health is
the official healthcare provider of the Bengals. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to this podcast and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment that helps more Bengals fans find us. I'm Dan Horde and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth Podcast.