We were presented by win Bet Betty's a team sport, but together at win Bet, Eric Allen here at one Jets Drive, joined by the National Football Leagues Vice President of Broadcast Planning.
That is the one, the only Mike North.
How good does it feel to finally put the twenty twenty three NFL schedule to bed? Uh?
Certainly glad it's over.
It was a bit of a death march there down the stretch, but look really happy with how it came out. Still kind of bracing for reactions today and tomorrow. The teams all got their schedules on Wednesday. The network partners got them Thursday morning. Most of the reaction was as expected, mostly positive. But look, the only reactions the matter of the fans. So let's see what happens on Thursday night when everybody gets their schedules and gets a chance to look.
At them on a daylight. Today, you know, you only see your own schedule.
Then tomorrow you see everybody else's and that's when, hey, wait a minute, I thought I was good, but now I'm not as good as I thought I was.
That's when the phone starts ringing.
So still bracing for some feedback for the next twenty four hours or so.
Mike, at this point last year we talked about it and you said, you have to earn your way into prime time. How did the New York Jets earn their way into primetime in twenty twenty three? Five primetime games plus the NFL's first ever black Frida again.
Yeah, Look, that was a good football team last year. I know the maybe quarterback play was disappointing, but what rookie of the year. I mean, it's a good football team. You certainly were going to find yourselves on national television quite a bit anyway. You just think about the schedule that you had, whether it was Philadelphia or Kansas City or any of the division opponents. Trading for a four time NFL MVP, future first ballot Hall of Famer, that's
another way to find yourself on the national television schedule. So, look, the Jets, we're gonna be well represented in national windows. Obviously, signing Rogers kind of up the any a little bit and maybe went from let's say two or three to closer to five or six. And then you throw in some four to twenty five double header games on Sunday afternoon, and yeah, there's gonna be a lot of Jets on national television.
Please please be good.
So what was the Jets watch specifically like for you a man in your position as far as they're tracking Aaron Rodgers throughout the offseason, as I'm sure you guys were, because you have to put that schedule together. And on March fifteenth, what clicks maybe as far as the communications internally for you guys when he gets on the Pat McAfee's show and says, my attention is to play in the National Football League in twenty twenty three, and it's to play with the Jets.
Yeah, that day was, Hey, why don't we stop the computers for just a couple of minutes and I'll talk to each other. Like we said, some of these two hundred and seventy two assets were worth you know, this much, and if Aaron Rodgers is your quarterback, those assets might be worth this much. And certainly if you're going to play against Kansas City and we were lucky enough to get ourselves, you know, another Mahomes Rogers games, since we lost it right when he had COVID last year or
two years ago. It's it's good to it was good for us to be able to take a moment stop, reevaluate. Part of this, you know, we talked about it last year. It's part art and part science. You know, the gut, the feel, the instincts, what game would I.
Want to watch?
What sounds like a football game? But there's some science to it too, and we're trying to do some predictive analytics. Who's going to be good, who's going to be in a playoff chase, which of these matchups tend to produce good games? And obviously which of these games do we think are going to generate the higher viewership for our fans.
So the predictive analytics had to shift a little bit as the social media buzz as everybody started talking about Rogers to the Jets, Rogers to the Jets, everybody was just a little bit more interested in some of those Jets games. So sort of a one day stop and restart and reevaluate and if he is going to be a Jet, wouldn't it be great if we did this or that, or we can't do this now, and we got to make sure we do something like that later. And then it kind of dragged on a bit, didn't it.
Really.
At some point we started to wonder, hey, if we get through draft and a deal doesn't get done, is there a chance this doesn't happen? And if it doesn't happen, should we maybe rethink some of the decisions that we'd already kind of committed to. So there was a call it a hedge your bet plan if he hadn't gotten the deal done and then the teams hadn't worked out the trade compensation. But grateful that they did and we were able to stay on track and maybe even push
it just a little bit further. When you think about, you know, the Monday night game in week one, or Black Friday like we talked about, or the two Sundays or the two Espens, there's there's an awful lot of really good Jets games, and if he stays healthy and the Jets stay relevant, I think it's going to be really good for our fans.
What was your reaction Monday afternoon, three days prior to the draft, when Adams after took to social media and said, Hey, the trade is done. The Jets and the Packers have agreed to terms. The trade actually becomes official the next day, two days prior to the draft.
Yeah, it was a definite sense of relief, and strangely enough, happened to coincide really quickly, right with Lamar Jackson signings to you in Baltimore. So you talk about two of the kind of open issues that we had, they got wrapped up for us, I think within twenty four hours of each other, and that was great for us to be able to kind of take that trepidation away. Don't
have to worry so much anymore. Now we can just really grind forward and continue on the path that we were on and try to land this plane from May eleven.
Why Jets Bills in week one? And also, can you talk about the significance of having a New York team host the game twenty two years after nine to eleven.
Yeah, Look, obviously we knew the date on the calendar, and we certainly thought it appropriate. At least one of the New York teams was playing on Monday night. We
actually talked about having both of them play. I reached out to the Jets and to the Giants, knowing that they're playing each other in week three of the preseason, would they be comfortable from a football standpoint turning around and playing each other again just a couple of weeks later when accounts and to their credit, both teams said, yep, absolutely, if that's the right thing for the league, we will
do it. So we absolutely considered some schedules that had Jets Giants as the Monday night or a Week one. This is probably more than you're asking, but as we tried to solve the Week one puzzle, you know, obviously Kansas City was going to play on kickoff, and any Kansas City game would have been great television. There was
a must c TV right now. The next two probably most interesting, you know, most likely to generate significant viewership opportunities, was going to be any Dallas Cowboys game and Aaron Rodgers first game is a Jet. And what we have in Week one, as you know, is the double doubleheader for CBS and Fox, So they both have four to twenty five Eastern Time double header games. That means every fan in the country gets four games on the opening Sunday of the season. What we try to do is
balance the for CBS and Fox. You don't want anybody to be too high or too low. You want CBS and Fox to sort of split the baby in Week one. If one of them was gonna get Dallas, then the other one was probably gonna have a tough time keeping up. And if one of them was gonna get the Jets, then the other one was probably gonna have a tough time keeping up. So it stood the reason for us that once you got Kansas City on kickoff, have about Dallas in one primetime window and the Jets in the
other primetime window. And what we came around was talking with our friends at NBC and ESPN. You know, Dallas Giants Sunday night at week one seems to be a staple. We've definitely done that before. And then with the Jets, you know, you can do Aaron Rodgers first game on
Monday night. He's got the whole day to himself, so you get the kind of the ESPN hype machine starting in the morning with the talk shows, all throughout the day with the radio and the podcast and the website and everything else, just kind of pointing towards you know, Aaron first game as a Jet. Love the idea of
like the whole country focused on that one. You do it on Sunday night, and you've got eight or seven games earlier in the day, and you're just kind of squeezing in at the back end this one, you kind of get that whole day kind of focused on his first game. What did he look like in the preseason? Did he even play in the preseason? You know, I love the idea of having a New York home game and Aaron's first game, and of course playing Josh Allen
and the Bills. I mean, every division game in the AFC East now means just a little bit more, and so having one of those Week one is great, and you come back with the other Bills Jets game, you know, a couple of months later, also in a national window at four to twenty five.
Yeah, as a guy who works there in the city and lives around here, what do you think the environment's going to be like at MetLife And how big of.
A stage is that the Jets And what does it say.
About how far they've come that they will be playing Monday night football standalone game against the Bills in Week one.
Look, every city in the country just feels bigger, feels buzzier. People are happier when the football team's good. So certainly here in New York we got two football teams, and there was that stretch there through what about October mid November where they were both good last year and everybody
started getting sighted. Reminded me of the days whatever it was fifteen twenty years ago, when we got into December and it was pretty obvious they were both going to make the playoffs, and we started talking about, Hey, what happens if they're both both hosting championship games? Right like he was on Saturday, one Sunday, one Sunday, one Monday. I'd love for that to be a conversation again. That would be a fantastic problem for the NFL to have
the Jets and Giants both being good. It's good for the NFL, It's good for our media partners, obviously the biggest market in the country. You know, the schedule makers look smarter when the Jets and Giants and Rams and Chargers and Cowboys and Bears and Niners all are playing well. That might be a little out of our hands, but certainly hope to take advantage of it if we can.
How about the thought process going into week two, the Jets coming off the short week, going to Dallas, where there are a couple iterations from the computer that spit out the Jets maybe playing prime time at some point with Dallas and why was the double header windle the way to go for you guys.
Yeah, look to us, the Sunday afternoon doubleheader window on CBS and Fox, the Sunday night games, the Monday night games, even the Thursday night games now on Amazon, those are all big windows for us. Those are all good landing spots for our best games. You know, we've got the
Jewish Holidays in there in weeks two and three. So trying to manage the Jets and Giants fans who should be home and at what time just didn't really feel right to have the Jets come off of that big Monday night game and then turn around and play a one o'clock Sunday afternoon game that might only be available
in fifteen percent of the country. What if Rogers has a monster game and throw us for four hundred yards and four touchdowns and he's the biggest story in the league, and then you turn around a week two and you don't get to tell that story because there's eight other games going on at the same time. So thinking about how to you know, manage the stadium, managed the fans, managed the television partners, and look, certainly his first couple
of games are gonna be unbelievably interesting. You know, everybody's going to tune in for week one and then week two. Can he keep it going? Can he rebound? Like it all depends on what he does in week one, So finding a national television home for that one as well. That Jets Dallas game was at the top of our friends at CBS's wish list, and they were really happy to get it.
And he thought at all as far as the Jets on Thanksgiving.
Yeah, certainly thought about Thanksgiving. Couldn't do Black Friday relative to you know, the Cowboys always playing on Thursday, but definitely oh that's right. Yeah, definitely looked at schedules where the Jets were at the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving for you know, a dozen years now has always been that Cowboys four thirty Eastern time Thanksgiving game almost universally our most watched game of the season. It's just become
a tradition. That's what we all do. And you know, you, me and nine friends could probably go play Dallas that day and twenty million people will watch better if somebody other than that goes in there. And we sent the Giants in there last year. Remember at this time last year. I'm not sure anybody was expecting much out of the Giants,
right they were off a relatively disappointing season. So having the Giants go to Dallas last season do whatever it was, forty two forty three million viewers kind of showed us, you know, we always knew there was a floor that
might have showed us where the ceiling was. Like, you could really generate a pretty significant viewership number on Thanksgiving if you're lucky enough to get a big team with a big national following, and they thankfully could play a game that's decided in the final drive of the game, Like that's that's a recipe for good viewership. So we looked at Jets Dallas on Thanksgiving. We looked at Philly, didn't really want to send New York back there. Again,
I'm not sure mister Marraw would have loved that. We talked about the Rams, we talked about Seattle obviously landed on Washington. Just felt like that Jets Dallas game could have a home where it could generate maybe a higher ceiling than you know, taking Thanksgiving from here to here as opposed to taking a Sunday afternoon when from here to here. So that's sort of how we ended up kind of deploying it that way. But we looked at schedules where the Jets Cowboys game was Sunday night, was
Monday night, was Thanksgiving? Was a Fox doubleheader, was a CVS doubleheader. It was one of those kind of you know, five tool utility players.
It could have gone anywhere.
What about Week four and that enticing matchup between the Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs? In your mind, was that always going to go towards the spotlight that is Sunday Night Football.
Yeah, again, it's one of those five tool utility players. It could have gone anywhere, and was certainly considered it in a lot of other places. But you know, that was definitely a game that needed to find a home somewhere on the primetime schedule and these last couple of years. Strangely, I'm not sure it was intentional, but it's kind of like developed that way that that final Sunday in September
on NBC on Sunday Night Football. We've landed with a couple of really big games in there, and for whatever else NBC has going on, whether it's you know, a college football game or a NASCAR race or I think this they've gotten the Ryder Cup like it. Just there's a promotional engine, a marketing opportunity around that final Sunday in September. And a couple of years ago was Tom Brady's return. We did Tampa Bay at New England and they did that Adell song for the promo, which was
pretty cool. And then last year it was Mahomes again it was Mahomes and Brady, it was Casey Tampa and just that sort of has become almost like a high watermark for us on opportunity that kind of fourth Sunday in September, that that fourth Sunday of the season and to see Kansas City Jets kind of land right in there felt like a really good opportunity. Again, you could have done it a little earlier, but you're getting into
the Jewish holidays. You get a little later, and who knows, we might be up against the Yankees postseason game, which isn't really fair to the fan in New York. So you want to try to make sure that everybody can see all the good games. You wait too long and maybe you missed your moment, right, what if Heaven forbid somebody got hurt or somebody's scuffing a little bit and isn't having the season you wanted, So you kind of
try to guess, like we all do. It's may none of us know what the season is going to develop in September, no less December. So that's sort of week four. Hopefully all the storylines remain. And yeah, Mahomes and Rogers on the same field together, sounds like a football game.
I want to watch.
The Jets twenty twenty three schedule is out now see Aaron Rodgers and the Jets host some of the best in the National Football League, including Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen Moore. Locking your tickets at yjets dot com slash tickets. So those guys have combined for six NFL MVPs, three Super Bowl MVPs, and three championships, and they both figure to be in the running for another ring this year.
That one is going to be a must see. What about the back to back prime times for the Jets after the bye you got La Chargers, Justin Herbert coming to My Life night Special, and then the short week to turn around and you have a Sunday night game in the Sin City.
The Jets going to Vegas for the first time.
Yeah, I can't tell you how many people have asked me, Hey, can you tell me when that Chess Raiders game is that? That's the one everybody's kind of got circled on their calendars, and you know the fact that it falls in a primetime slide. Man, let's make a weekend out of it. Maybe stay till Monday calling sick. I love that idea. Look,
those late games are an interesting challenge for us. As you know, we play the bulk of our game Sunday at one o'clock, and you've got some of those late games, and if they're not the four to twenty five double header game on CBS or Fox, then they're either in a window with another double header game. So you might have, you know, Jets Vegas at four to twenty five with making it up Cincinnati Kansas City, right then the Jets
fans don't get to see that Bengals Chiefs game. On the alternative side, if you don't land at four twenty five, you're gonna land at four five, and then you're on the single header network. And then in New York, yes, you could see both, but you're competing with each other and that's probably not good for either partner either, So trying to find that right landing spot for some of
those Western games. Now that those Western teams are so good, right the Chargers, the Raiders, the Seahawks, the Niners, any of the New York teams. Right, New York's going out to San the Giants are going out to San Francisco, the Jets are going out to the Raiders. I mean, need to find good homes for those and primetime does make a lot of sense.
Is that huge for you guys from a league perspective, Like you're talking about the coast to coast, I mean, you got La market, New York market, and obviously there's our national brands, especially the Jets with Aaron Rodgers now at this point, and then the following week Raiders, the historic franchise paired up with the Jets and their future Hall of Fame quarterback and a team that's on the rise you mentioned before, a lot of young talent here and Robert Salad doing very good things here in his
third year.
Yep, love it, love it. I mean look at it.
Like I said, it makes the schedule makers look smart when you know teams with national followings from major media markets, really big cities are playing well and playing interesting and compelling, and you know, games of playoff implications down the stretch. We'll take all that we can. We root for all thirty two equally, of course here in the big you know, palette halls. But yeah, having the two New York teams
competitive helps in a lot of way. It's not just our national television partnerships, but also here in New York you guys know, you know, most weeks, if we're not as competitive as we hoped, you're going to see Jets and Giants games both at one o'clock, so that we can get that big Cincinnati Kansas City or Philly Dallas game or whatever it is into the market at four
twenty five. Having more of those Giants and Jets games deployed across four twenty five Thursday night, Sunday nights, Monday nights should alleviate some of that one o'clock you know, conflict between Jets and Giants games, so the fans in New York should be able to watch both teams every weekend.
Why Black Friday for the NFL? Why was that a big step for the league?
And also can you talk about you guys selecting the Jets and the Dolphins, the two longtime division rivals to go head to head.
Yeah.
Look, Black Friday is gonna be a first for us. Haven't done that before. Our friends at Amazon were really eager. You know, obviously it's a big retail day and they are certainly a big retail partner, so that's sort of their super Bowl.
And if you think.
About everybody going to Amazon that day and you put a little button right next to the checkout button and like, hey, before you check out, click here, They're gonna move that game in front of the paywall.
So you don't need Amazon Prime.
All you need is an Internet connection and everybody's gonna be able to watch that game. It's a you know, there's not a lot of windows where you know, you could put an NFL game that we haven't already, so.
That was one of them.
And you know that weekend is such a big sports weekend, right, we have such a big day on Thursday with three games on Thanksgiving. We always come back with what we hope is a really good doubleheader, a good Sunday night or a good Monday night. There's usually some really good college football on Saturday that weekend, So you know, that Friday afternoon sort of felt like maybe an itch we could scratch something for our fans to have a little
opportunity to go watch another big game. And again, it's a game that otherwise would have been deployed on a Sunday afternoon. And you think about a Jets Dolphins game, the historic rivalry and now with Rogers and Tua, you know, that's a game it feels like more people should be able to see, as opposed to win a one o'clock window and kind of landlocked if there's a Patriots game with it, or an Eagles game with it, or a
Browns game with it. So getting that game into a national window Black Friday is going to be really fun. I know Amazon's really excited about it and wanted to kind of find that right sort of divisional game maybe in year one. Those games always matter no matter when we play them. We happen to have three divisional games on Thanksgiving Thursday this year, so come back with a fourth divisional game on Black Friday should make for a really fun couple of days.
What about the Jets' final prime time game against the Cleveland Browns that Thursday Night affair. I wanted to ask you about four short weeks for the Jets. I think that would make you smile at this point because I'm sure you've been dealing with this question from teams like Kansas City or the Packers for years. That's that's the price of being good now, right, the expectations Now you are gonna have short weeks.
Yeah, you're gonna have short weeks. You're gonna play in non traditional windows. You're you're not gonna play Sunday afternoon at one o'clock year after year. And I don't think there's any Jets fans, certainly no Jets player or coach or or an owner who's gonna want to go back to that, because you know, generally that's indicative of, you know, the success still to come. So the fact that you know the Jets were coming, they were getting better, they
were right there last year. They're a good football team with a lot of good pieces. You had a four time MVP. You you certainly are gonna find yourself in more national television windows. The short week from Monday to Sunday. That happens all the time. Right, we played Monday, We've been playing Monday night football for fifty years. You know,
Monday to Sunday is a thing in this league. And generally speaking, the data, the analytics don't really show that they're that much of an advantage for a one day rest disparity. The short weeks on Thursday. You know, it's only been a few years that we've had this full season of Thursday, so we're all still kind of learning. It's a limited data set, but we're keeping an eye
on it. But when ownership voted last month to allow teams to play multiple short weeks like this, multiple games on a Thursday, this gives us the opportunity to put a team like the Jets, a team like the Steelers, a team like the Bears on two short weeks, you know, still cognizant about where they are. They shouldn't be too close together, and we should spread them out. We should
have the bye week in there somewhere. They should get, you know, the mini bye after both Thursdays, plus the full bye week, and hopefully those have been staggered, you know, in enough of a way that you know, guys can get their rest, guys can recover, and yeah, we met with our friends at Amazon this morning, and you know, one of the highlights of their schedule is seeing two Jets games on Amazon. That sends a pretty good message to their partners and to their advertisers.
I'm not trying to stop you here, Mike, but the Jets play ten of their first fifteen games at Mettlife Stadium. That's sixty seven percent of games. Do you think that's ever happened before? Because you got the nine home you got the nine home games, and then you have the Giants game where technically the Jets are the visitor.
Yeah, I mean, can't think of another time.
I mean maybe the last time the Jets and Giants played each other, and it went that way for the Giants four years ago. But no, that's a look, that's one of those quirks where, you know, people always talk
about it's a rotational based schedule. So you know, right now, fourteen of your seventeen games for the next you know, twenty four years until we change something, so you know most of your games already, and it just so happens that, you know, we saw it last year where you know, well, I think it's the NFC East, like you end up pairing up with divisions that maybe you might be a little down, and not that anybody fattens up on anybody
in this league, but you know, you know the rotation. Now, you might be running into this division when they're all really good and everybody's five hundred or better. You might also be running into a division where everybody's kind of resetting and rebuilding. And you know, the good news at least is that it's gonna be the same for everybody
in the division. So to the extent that the Jets are playing, you know this division or that division, so are the Dolphins, so are the Patriots, so are the Bills. So you don't get that wild fluctuation. There's only three games now that are standings based, and even that kind of changes. Right, Sometimes you run into a standings based game that you say, hey, that team was much better
than their standings last year. And other times you catch a fourth place guy and you're like, they got really good or they traded for a you know, four time MVP quarterback. So there's only a couple of games that are impacted by the standings now, those ones versus ones, and the rest.
Of them are known, you know, years and years in advance.
Just so happened that this one happened to coincide the Jets with a road game met life against the Giants. You'd hope they take advantage of it.
Yeah, it's fascinating because you got the nine home games and you're done with your home games after week fifteen or week sixteen this year, I should say, because obviously you finish up with Cleveland and then New England. How about we talked about the Jets playing primetime and being in that doubleheader window this year. I mean, I believe the Jets are in the four o'clock hour six times.
And then the interesting thing about the way they close, Mike, you have in December for those people who do like the one o'clock starts, it's Atlanta one o'clock, Houston one o'clock, at Miami one o'clock, Washington at home one o'clock, and then at Cleveland at New England. So fans who are into the one o'clock start and want to bring their families out, you're gonna be able to partake in that in December.
Here with an asterisk, right, that's what too with an ask.
So you know, we have certainly put an awful lot of Jets games on national television and in primetime, but there's there's still room.
For one more.
So you know, if you find yourself where Houston or Atlanta or Washington is maybe a little bit better than folks are projecting right now, and you get to December and like we said, Aaron Rodgers is throwing for four thousand yards and fifty touchdowns, and you know, the Jets are in the mix for the division and a one seed.
You know, finding one.
More national television game for the Jets wouldn't be uh, you know, outside the box wouldn't be ye much the question.
No doubt.
But as we stand here today, only one of their games could be flexed, well, one of their games can be flexed because they've already reached the maximum on the Thursday nights.
So you don't even we don't even have flexible scheduling yet for Thursday nights. You know, owner discussed it, I should say, a month ago, and they may discuss it again in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks. So there's there's no flex yet for Thursday. If there were to become flexible scheduling for Thursday, the Jets wouldn't be eligible to move to another Thursday they've already got there two short weeks, but there's still room for another Jets game
to move to a Sunday night. We've got flexible scheduling now for the first time for Monday night. But as you look at the schedule, I don't think the league was you know, reckless or you know, too risky with some of those Sunday night and Monday night games late in the year. We're not looking to flex with any you know, good fortune. The crystal ball was clear, and the games that we chose for those primetime windows in December are going to have playoff implications and we're going
to keep them right where we scheduled them. But you know, you never know. That's the way this league works. And if you find yourself with a game in primetime between two teams that just aren't having the season that they had hoped to, we're not doing them any favors by leaving them in a national window. We're not doing their fans any favors asking them to come out at night, and we're not doing you know, the rest of the country any favors having this be our primetime game, especially
if there's a good game sitting there. You know, at one o'clock or four o'clock on a Sunday with a bunch of other games around it that you might not be able to see it otherwise. So let's take that game out a Sunday afternoon, move it in on a national window. Those teams have played their way into additional primetime exposure, and we'll take the two teams who were originally scheduled for the night time and we're moving back to Sunday afternoon.
Better for them, better for their fans.
All right, we were putting it in pencil. Five primetime games, definitely the Friday Black Friday Special against the Miami Dolphins, the Jets hosting the Miami Dolphins at Mount Leaf Stadium. How many computer iterations this year? You told me last year? Is one hundred more than one hundred thousand?
Yeah, it was.
It was similar. It's a little different this year. This is probably more than you care to know. But you know, with the added flexibility now where the AFC is the road team no longer is a by definition a CBS game, and the NFC is a road team no longer a fox. You know, for decades that's the way it worked, and so if the league wanted to take a game and move it to primetime Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night. You were literally taking it away for CBS and FOTS.
And that was actually a term a takeaway. It was in the network television contracts. It was in our ownership resolutions, like there was a limit to the number of times you could take away a game. That game belonged to CBS, and if you wanted to take it away, you couldn't then take away that one or any more than this many. That's all gone. Now every game is a jump ball,
every game is a toss up. So we had a lot more options, and like we were talking about before, with some of these you know, five tool utility games, you know, to be able to consider the same game for Sunday night football, Monday night football, Thursday night football, Fox doubleheader, CBS doubleheader, that's a lot of extra grinding for the computer. That's a lot of extra nodes in the search tree. So it took a little longer for the computers to run. So the good news is the
schedules that they found were better. The challenge was having to be pai and wait for them, and that's just not the way we work so it was it was a challenge for the humans to kind of like wait for the computers and you never know, Oh, is this as good as I could do?
Should I turn it on? No? Let me wait ten more minutes, Let me wait, let me wait.
Ten more hours. Oh jeez, I could let them run another month. And who knows, is there a better schedule out there? Probably, you know, define better. You know, take this three game road trip from this team and give it to that team, or take this short week for that team and put it on that team. You know, whatever it is that somebody likes or hates about this schedule, there's going to be something that they like or hate about the next iteration. So we could have gone another month.
We could have kept grinding, We could have kept looking. Commissioner, to his credit, always challenging us. You never know when you're done. You never know if this is the best you could do. Hard for me to look them in the eye and tell them, you know, with absolute certainty, this was the optimal schedule. But I know it was closed.
I know that.
You know, we hung it on the wall. We know it was the leader in the clubhouse. We threw really good, high quality contender schedules at it. The difference this year is that those schedules looked really different. You know, most years you put a leader on the club, on the leader on the wall. Here's a contender. It's got all the same Sunday nights, all the same Monday nights. Just moved a couple of Sunday afternoons in this three game
road trip or that. By this year, those finalists, as we got down near the end, they looked wildly different. We had different kickoff games, we had different banks giving games, we had different Christmas games. It's really hard to compare two finalists when they looked so very different. And at that point it was really hard to say better or worse. It was really more like different flavors, chocolate or vanilla.
You're gonna like one, I'm gonna like one. At the end of the day, only one vote matters, and that guy picked this one. And I think we made a real good choice.
I did too.
Most of the ice creams that went against the wall, that were thrown against the wall, did they have the jets in week one no matter what was going on the wall?
Yeah? They did.
I Mean, like we said, it was going to be hard to balance the Sunday afternoons between CBS and Fox and the double doubleheader if one of them had the Jets, because then the other guy can't compete with Aaron Rodgers first game, or if one of them had Dallas, the other guy can't compete with that. And to put the Dallas game and the Jets game both in the four to twenty five window meant we as fans couldn't watch them both. You could put back and forth, which is.
Fun but different.
So we got real comfortable, real quick Kansas City for kickoff Jets and Dallas Sunday night and Monday night, and then kind of looked at a bunch of different options in terms of which opponents, you know, Sunday or Monday. And then as it trickled down through the rest of the schedule, if you use one of your Sunday nights here, you only get more one more Sunday night. So if you're the Jets and you want to play that casey Jets game in week four, should NBC be out of
both of their Jets by the end of September. What if Rogers is a great, big story and the Jets are eaten too, NBC would love another shot at that, So trying to satisfy you know, our own personal preferences in terms of the flavor and the network partner's needs across all seventeen weeks, and again, more than anything competitive fairness. All those schedules that went up against the contender, the
vast majority of them died for competitive issues. Whether it's just that three game road trip is too onerous, or that's a Monday, Sunday Thursday sequence for this team, or they've got to play a three game road trip that happens, but that three game road trip happens to include a cross country trip in it, maybe that's not the way to do it. So most of the schedules, when they have to die, they die for team issues as opposed for TV issues.
You have strong relationships throughout the league.
Ben, I'll let you know tomorrow.
Inside this building.
What was the reaction when you made the call here this week and you told.
The Jet staffers of the schedule. What was the reaction?
Yeah, the the Jets call was one of those good ones. I tend to try to take the ones where I know somebody might be a little disappointed. I don't want anybody else on the team to get screamed at if if you know, at the end of the day, I'm the guy pushed on the button. So I'll take most of the calls where I'm bracing for somebody's negative reaction. Every now and then I like to take one where
I know somebody's going to be happy. So really excited to call Jimei and Brian Mulligan set it all up, and you know, they knew a couple of things already. We started this breadcrumb approach, so they knew the Black Friday game. The internet might have gotten a hold of maybe one or two of their other games. But to be able to give them a call and give them really what amounts to such good news, right everybody? You know, those guys they live and breathe, you know, every Sunday.
They live and die every Sunday. And it's it's hard, you know, year after year, you know, to be chasing and chasing and chasing and not quite getting there, and to feel like you're that close, to feel like you made a move that was really going to be a difference maker, and then to see the League office react to it accordingly and reward you know, not just that move, but your success from last year and some of the other roster building that you've done. I think they were
really excited. I think we're pretty excited and look out of our hands. We'll see what happens once the season starts. But as we sit here on May eleventh, feel really good about this schedule and feel really good about the Jets' contributions to this schedule.
Well said well, Mike North.
The Jets were only a matinee show last year, but they will be a prime time act five times in twenty twenty three and a Black Friday special as well.
We enjoyed it. We always like catching up with you.
Make sure you get some sleep and some rest this weekend, you know, medicine.
I know it's been a stressful time, but it's always.
Thrilled to be a part of it, you know, unbelievably grateful that you know they still let me in the building. No, let's get to you know, play a role in such an important project that you know everybody's so excited about. I mean, you and I have been doing this long enough to know. Schedule used to come out kind of middle of April with no pomp and circumstances. You can call on Wednesday, like hey, it's coming out tomorrow, and like, okay,
you take the schedule and away you go. Now you see kind of the social media arms race where everybody's doing something and everybody's got their you know, team parties, and you could really make an event out of it, which is awesome.
And I love that people care.
I love that they're so interested and unbelievably grateful for the team that we have here. Annie Bo's, Blake Jones, Charlotte Carey, Lucy Popko, working with Howard Katz, Hans Schroeder, Brian Rollapp. I mean, these people have been living and breathing this process for fourteen weeks and really really challenging each other to find that magical, mythical perfect schedule. I'm
not sure we did, but I hope we're close. And now it's kind of up to the guys on the field, and I hope everybody stays healthy, and I hope everybody's eight and eight going into week eighteen and still in a playoff.
Chase Well, we hope to see a Week one at Matt Weist.
I mean there Jets, Bill's Monday Night Football.
Mike North, vice president of broadcast Planning for the National Football League have a good one.
Thank you, appreciate it.