The National Football League will spread their 16 game opening week schedule over four days beginning with the traditional Super Bowl Champions hosting the Thursday night contest. In addition to a baker's dozen games on Sunday, the Chicago Bears will host the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night and the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers will meet in the first of seven International Games on Friday night in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The Friday night game will serve as a home game for the Chargers, even though it is played on a neutral field.

Good idea?

I think not.

Giving up a home game played against your primary division rival, a team that has won your division nine consecutive years, seems like a raw deal for the Chargers from the schedule makers. Why not have this serve as a home game for the Chiefs and give the Chargers the advantage of playing their second meeting of the season against Patrick Mahomes and company in Los Angeles?

This week, I heard a caller on the NFL radio network complain that it appears to him that the schedule makers are unfair to his hometown team, the Cleveland Browns. Really, I hadn’t noticed. But he went on a litany of complaints while saying, “This season, the Browns have to open against the Cincinnati Bengals, play at the Baltimore Ravens in the second week, then have to play the Green Bay Packers before going to Detroit before meeting the Minnesota Vikings in Ireland.”

Okay, that is their schedule, and where do you think the schedule makers have dealt them a more difficult than it has to be matchup? The fact that they are playing the Packers, Lions, and Vikings is based on this is the AFC North Division’s year to meet all the teams in the NFC North Division. They will play the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field in December to complete their schedule against the four teams from the NFC North. The fact that the Browns open against the Bengals and meet the Ravens in second week action is simply games against their division opponents.

A Browns fan can be concerned that their team has to meet the NFC North this year. The grouping of the Lions, Packers, Vikings and Bears is one of the more talented quartets in the league.

Fans have a way of thinking their team is always getting screwed. They find the referees seemingly always against them and the league out to get them. I worked in an organization that carried the same suspicions in the 1970’s, the Oakland Raiders.

John Madden often complained about how the league made the Raiders schedule particularly difficult early in a season with an abundance of road games and contests played on different days. There was a reason for this. The Raiders shared a stadium with the Oakland A’s so a number of would-be home dates were shifted to road games to not conflict with the baseball season in September and the anticipation that the A’s in the 1970’s would be hosting a baseball playoff game in October.

Second, the Raiders were one of the teams that generated the highest television ratings, so the league wanted to feature them on Monday Night Football and in primetime slots. Madden just thought the schedule was unduly tough on the Raiders, particularly in 1973, when we didn’t play our first game in the Oakland Coliseum until November 4th. It was as if he didn’t see the schedule makers challenges with the shared stadium or that we chose to shift our second week of the season game from the Coliseum to Cal Berkeley to sell more tickets when we hosted the defending Super Bowl Champion Miami Dolphins.

As for the officials out to get the Silver and Black, that was a constant refrain from team owner Al Davis. It seemed to have merit just like after a while the music on the radio appears to be in harmony with the shadows caused by the trees blowing in the wind. It probably wasn’t true, but it didn’t stop Davis from creating the reality it was by constantly calling it out.

Now, do the schedule makers adjust the schedule for competitive reasons?

I think they do.

I have noticed that the league seems to put the best teams in tough spots over the first four weeks whenever they can. I believe this is in an attempt to pin the best teams with a loss or two in the first month that helps create competitive division races deep into the regular season. We can see this in action this week with the Baltimore Ravens battling the Buffalo Bills in the season opening Sunday night game.

The Ravens and Bills are two of the best teams in the league, and one of them is going to be pinned with an opening loss if we don’t experience a rare tie. Once the Ravens or Bills have a loss, the races in the AFC North or AFC East have the promise of being more competitive for weeks to come.

And then there is this, the Chargers losing a home game against the Chiefs to play in Brazil. I don’t hear Kansas City fans complaining about officiating or scheduling and do you think the NFL is really looking to nudge Andy Reid’s team to a tenth straight division title?