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Fans who like to travel to games have to be leery about buying tickets or making travel arrangements for games played in weeks 13 to 17 on Thursday nights.

During that five-week period, the NFL will be allowed to flex two games to Thursday nights. They will be streamed on Amazon. It is another example that greed is good in the NFL these days.

At the recent owners meeting, commissioner Roger Goodell needed 24 votes to pass the measure and he got exactly that number. He was two votes shy in the March meetings. To get it passed, the league agreed to notify teams 28 days in advance instead of 15 that a game may be flexed.

If no games are flexed to Thursday night this year, the league will try it again next year. If they are, Goodell will need 24 votes to pass it again next year.

It is interesting the “no” votes were the Raiders, Lions, Bengals, Steelers, Giants, Bears, Jets and Packers.

The Packers are a community-owned team and except for the Jets, the rest of the teams are family-owned and date their ownership at least back to 1963. And Giants co-owner John Mara was very vocal in his opposition. Those owners didn’t pay billions for the team the way many of the more recent owner have, so they may be more attuned to what is best for the game and the fans rather than how much revenue the games bring in.

Flexing Thursday night games shows how desperate the league is to improve the Prime ratings since they are getting a billion dollars a year for 11 years for the package.

Last year the ratings averaged only 9.6 million viewers on Thursday nights, a drop of over 40 percent from the previous year when the games weren’t streamed.

The streaming, though, may be more of a problem than the matchups. The technology has to improve because the picture sometimes freezes and it is a hassle to go back and forth between network program and streaming.

The league did seem to make an effort to give Prime better late season games this year. The Cowboys-Seahawks and Steelers-Patriots in weeks 13-14 don’t figure to be flexed. The final three are Chargers-Raiders, Saints-Rams and Jets-Browns. It remains to be seen if those are attractive matches late in the season.

Meanwhile, the NFL may find out that streaming games simply isn’t ready for prime time and that it has to accept fewer viewers in exchange for the big payday..

In its first century, leaders like Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle stressed building its audience.

That is now so old fashioned. In today’s NFL, they will trade fewer viewers for more money from streaming.

First, they took a billion dollars a year from Amazon to show Thursday night games for 11 years. Even though Prime has 220 million subscribers, the games only averaged 9.58 million fans.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the league has announced it sold the rights to the Saturday night wildcard game to Peacock for about $110 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

They ignored the fact Peacock only has about 20 million subscribers. Last year’s Saturday night playoff game between the Chargers and Jaguars drew 20 million viewers and that was a 20 percent drop from 2021 because neither team has a big fan base. The Chargers are in a big market, but Los Angeles has yet to show much interest in them since they moved from San Diego.

The Peacock game won’t get anywhere near 20 million viewers, but the NFL doesn’t seem to care because it pockets the money. Meanwhile, Peacock was started in 2020 and is expected to lose $3 billion this year.

To watch the game, fans have to pay $4.99 fee for the month and put up with all the problems of watching a streaming game, including the glitches in the picture and difficulty of trying to sign in. The only fans who can watch the game on network TV will be the ones in the two markets of the teams playing in the games.

And then there is the question of where the NFL is going with this. How many games will be streamed in the future? Will the Super Bowl one day be streamed or put on Pay Per View?

Will the NFL continue to have the Midas touch? Everything it touches turns into money, but at what cost?

In the universe of hundreds of channels it is difficult for them to draw the audiences it once did because viewers have more options. The NFL brags the Super Bowl drew a record audience, but the highest-rated game in terms of percentage of viewers was Super Bowl XVI between the 49ers and Bengals because cable was just getting started.

The NFL TV ratings have yet to return to 2015 levels and four of the six wild card games had a drop in audience from 2021.

But the NFL is no longer trying to grow its audience. Its business model is now trading fewer viewers for more money from streaming.

There was a time back in the day when NFL player salaries were not a big issue.

Pro football wasn’t a billion-dollar business even in the 1970s and players didn’t have agents, didn’t know what other players made and even the teams didn’t know what other teams paid. As late as the 1970s some undrafted rookies didn’t make $20,000 a year.

Finally in that decade, the NFLPA negotiated a deal with the owners for them to provide the first salary surveys for the players. Although no names were mentioned, the list included the high and low salary for each position each year with a median and average salary.

The startling figure was that O.J. Simpson was making $733,000 a year at a time when the second highest paid player, Archie Manning, was making in the $400,000 range.

Considering the fact that what O.J. made was close to double what the second highest paid player made, it may be the best contract ever. One owner told me that when reports came out of Buffalo, that O.J. got $2.1 million over three years, he thought the figures were hyped and not true.

The salary survey showed the figures were accurate.

Meanwhile, everything has changed now. NFL salaries are virtually a matter of public record. Almost all players have agents and they know the numbers for all the other players.

That is why it was quite surprising that Lamar Jackson decided not to hire an agent and negotiated with the Ravens himself.

The negotiations dragged for over a year without him getting a new deal. Jackson got a lot of flak for not having an agent. It didn’t help his cause that he was injured the last two years, doesn’t have a good playoff record and reports are that he wanted a fully guaranteed deal like the $230 million deal that Deshaun Watson got from Cleveland.

The owners were adamant to not let the Watson fully guaranteed deal set a precedent. It may be collusion but the NFL tends to get away with holding the line.

In the end, Jackson didn’t get a fully guaranteed deal, but he got so much money — $260 million for five years and $185 million guaranteed — that he couldn’t turn it down. At $52 million average a year, it is the best deal ever.

Granted, it will be topped soon, but Jackson got the last laugh. He got a great deal and won’t pay agent fees of several million dollars.. It could be argued that an agent might have gotten the deal earlier, but Jackson now has generational wealth.

Now the question is whether Jackson can take the Ravens deep into the playoffs or even to the Super Bowl. And since the entire league know the deal he got, it will be a target for agents representing star quarterbacks in the pipeline.

But with big money comes big expectations. We’ll see if he can live up to them.

There is no shortage of books written about American presidents.

But in his new book, “Power Players: Sports, Politics and the American Presidency (Hachette Book Group), Chris Cillizza adds a new twist to the subject of presidents by examining the interest that every president since Eisenhower has had in sports.

The theme of the book is that their interest in sports isn’t surprising because like it is in politics, winning is everything in sports.

And even if they aren’t that into participating in sports, they know how to use the interest of others in sports to gain what they wanted.

For example, Lyndon Johnson had no interest in baseball but he learned that Richard Russell, then a powerful senator from Georgia back when the Solid South was Democratic.

So Johnson started attending games with Russell, who was a loner and didn’t have anybody to go with. He attended few games before Johnson started going with him. And Russell started viewing him as sort of a surrogate son and helped him pass the 1957 Civil Rights bill that was so critical to Johnson’s reputation. That helped him get on the ticket in 1960.

A friend said Johnson could care less about sports, entertainment and movies. But he used baseball to his advantage.

Still some of the presidents cared a lot about sports.

Eisenhower, for example, was such a serious golfer that he went to Augusta 45 times, 29 as president. They also built him a three story seven bedroom cottage near the 10^th tee at Augusta.

He also played football at West Point before he suffered a knee injury and turned to poker and was very good at it. He later played a lot of bridge. The author then goes all through the presidents after Eisenhower and chronicles their athletic exploits or lack thereof.

The best athlete was probably Gerald Ford, who played center at the University of Michigan and was offered a contract by the Green Bay Packers. Still Ford had some spills and Chevy Chase exaggerated them on Saturday Night Live.

It wasn’t generally known what a good athlete he was. He was even a good skier. 

Cillizza writes, “The dirty little secret about Gerald Ford then was that he as a very good athlete. Which shouldn’t surprise exactly no one – and yet it does.” Ford kind of downplayed his athletic ability because athletes sometimes aren’t considered the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I wasn’t surprised he was a good athlete because I grew up in Grand Rapids and knew his background. My dad was in his high school class and played in the band. When Ford became president, I was working at UPI in New York and told our columnist before he went to interview Ford and the columnist mentioned my dad.

Ford said, “Oh, you mean Phil’s son.” Ford never forgot his roots. 

At least two presidents managed to inflate their athletic accomplishments.

In campaign stops at Ohio University in 2008 and 2010, Joe Biden said his Delaware team beat the Ohio University Bobcats in 1963. It turns out Delaware did win but Biden wasn’t on the team. The author says Biden “fibbed.”

And then there was Donald Trump. Not surprising that he pretended to be a better baseball player than he was in high school. Slate magazine did a deep dive into Hudson Valley papers and found nine box scores in which he had four hits in 29 at-bats.

By contrast, George H.W. Bush was good enough to be a first baseman at Yale and the book includes a picture of him meeting Babe Ruth shortly before he died.

The book is a good read filled with anecdotes like this. Cillizza said the idea for the book has been rattling around in his brain for the better part of five years and it turned out to be a good idea.

Do you like to debate who are the best of the sports legends? Do you like knowing their best numbers?

Mike Greenberg and Paul “Hembo” Hembek have just the book for you – “Got Your Number – The Greatest Sports Legends and the Numbers they Own.” It is just out and published by Hyperion Avenue.

They go from 0 to 100, and many of the numbers are uniform numbers. Like Derek Jeter at 2, Babe Ruth at 3 and Joe DiMaggio at 5.

Of course, some athletes don’t have numbers so Arnold Palmer is 62 for his number of tour wins. And then there is Secretariat who is 31 for the number of lengths he won the Belmont by in his Triple crown year. And 88 is for John Wooden’s longest winning streak at UCLA.

Each number gets two or three pages and tends to be crammed with interesting anecdotes and numbers.

For example, they note that Willie Mays, number 24, led the league in homers and steals four times each. No player has ever done that and probably never will again. He also won 12 Golden Gloves in a row and recorded 7,112 putouts, a record they say will never be broken. And then, of course, there was the catch of Vic Wertz drive in the World Series.

And the authors expect debate about their selections. Greenberg says he will defend every word he wrote but will listen to other sides.

OK, I will start with fact he left out both Lou Gehrig and Sandy Koufax. I was so surprised at their omissions that I went back through the book to make sure I hadn’t overlooked them. Meanwhile, Michael Jordan got 3 numbers – 23, 63 and 93. Isn’t one enough? It’s not like he was Bill Russell. And Dennis Rodman was included. Huh?

And he includes Dan Marino, who was routed in his only Super Bowl appearances and omits Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, Bobby Layne, Bart Starr and Terry Bradshaw, who all won multiple titles.

And he also left out some good anecdotes.

Of Walter Payton, he said he was an Ironman who simply did not miss games. Well, he missed one against the Pittsburgh Steelers in his rookie year in 1975 when he had a minor injury and the coaches figured there was no point in letting the Steel Curtain batter him. After that game, Don Pierson, the esteemed football writer who covered the Bears and the NFL for decades, said to Payton, “Jim Brown never did that.” Payton said, “Did what?” Pierson told him Brown never missed a game. Payton never missed another one even when he was hurt. I covered a game in 1983 in Baltimore when Payton was hurt and carried only three times for four yards. But he didn’t sit out. That was Payton.

And any discussion of Joe DiMaggio should include the iconic piece by Gay Talese in 1966 that was called the Silent Season of a Hero.

Talese talks about how Marilyn Monroe came back from a USO tour in Korea and said, “Joe, Joe, you never heard such cheering.” Joe’s memorable answer was “Yes I have.” That was the essence of DiMaggio. Didn’t need four words if three were enough. And an example of the cheering he heard during his celebrated career.

And he gave props to the Steeler dynasty of the 1970s, using 58 and 59 for the two HOF linebackers Jack Ham and Jack Lambert. Joe Greene got his own number later. He noted it was the only dynasty defined by its defense. He points out they played 18 playoff games between1972 and 1979 and didn’t allow a 100-yard rusher. And they stopped HOFers Larry Csonka, Tony Dorsett, O.J. Simpson and Earl Campbell twice. They also didn’t allow a 300-yard passer although there weren’t many 300 passing games in those days. Still, the authors didn’t mention that after the NFL banned the bump and run after five yards in 1978, a rule aimed at Mel Blount and the rest of the defense, they won their last two Super Bowls on offense, scoring over 30 points to beat the Cowboys and Rams.  The defense was so good they changed the rules to neutralize and then the offense took over.

Well, I could go on and on, but this book is definitely a good read. You can form your own opinions if you read it.

The debates help to make sports so interesting and this book will spark a lot of debate.

–Streaming is supposed to be the future for the NFL, but obviously the future is not now. The first year of streaming Thursday night games on Prime was less than a rousing success. The NCAA women’s title game got better ratings than the average for the Prime games. This is why Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to be able to flex games, but fell two votes shy of getting it passed at the owners meeting last month. He will try again in May. At the very least, he got the owners to approve teams getting two games on Thursday night, which means teams like Chiefs and Eagles will likely appear twice. But that is not going to solve the streaming problem. The NFL couldn’t resist Jeff Bezos’ billion-dollar offer, but the NFL will have to live with lower ratings for now on the streaming games. Meanwhile, Paramount+ streamed “Inside the NFL” for one year and dumped it, and it is now looking for a new home.

–The dynasty is over in New England and the Patriots now seem to be a dysfunctional team. Owner Robert Kraft is frustrated that the Patriots haven’t won a playoff game in four years and isn’t promising that coach Bill Belichick will survive long enough to break Don Shula’s record. And Belichick is not apparently happy that quarterback Mac Jones went outside the organization last year when he was struggling. And now there are reports Belichick may be shopping him depending on which version you hear. The Patriot Way isn’t working these days.

–The decision of NFL Media not to renew the contract of Jim Trotter, one of the best football writers, didn’t get much notice from the fans. But it is an important story because it is another example of the dysfunction and lack of diversity in the NFL. It was a bad look that Trotter’s contract wasn’t renewed after he asked Commissioner Roger Goodell two years in a row at a press conference about the lack of diversity. The NFL even offered Trotter three months’ severance pay if he would sign a non-disclosure form, but he declined it so he will be free to speak out more in the future. 

–Lamar Jackson’s future remains in limbo. No team has been willing to make him an offer and he has asked for a trade. Meanwhile, the Ravens, noted for being a good organization, aren’t handling it well. At their pre-draft press conference, they refused to discuss him, which kept it on front burner. Best if they just said no new developments and we will let u know when there are.

–There were a lot of eyebrows raised when the Jaguars gave Christian Kirk a four-year, $72 million dollar deal last year. As it turned out, the Jaguars got their money’s worth because he had a good season. But according to Tyreek Hill, it led to him leaving Kansas City. He wanted more than Kirk got so the Chiefs traded him to the Dolphins and won the Super Bowl without him. But the Kirk contract was a good example of how contracts can affect other players.

As the draft nears, the speculation continues.                                           

Which quarterback will the Panthers take with the No. 1 pick?

In recent weeks, the speculation has been the Panthers would go for C.J. Stroud. But now the rumors are that they will pick Bryce Young despite his 5-10 and 1/8 stature.

Longtime ESPN analyst Chris Mortensen is now giving the nod to Young.

And then there is Anthony Richardson, who was dynamite at the combine, but struggled at Florida.

And don’t forget Will Levis, who is likely to go in the first round but is generally ranked fourth of the four quarterbacks. Still, all the speculation shows that there is no sure thing in this draft, even the first pick.

None of the quarterbacks is a consensus choice for the top pick. And the short term future for the Panthers depends on getting this right.

But maybe there is no right answer. Maybe there is no Peyton or Luck in this draft. That is the Panthers’ worst nightmare.

Meanwhile, the speculation will continue until draft day.

Roger Goodell has turned the NFL into a money-making machine, but it never seems to be enough.

Just look at what has been going on in Goodell’s NFL recently.

He has decided that teams should be flexed into playing Thursday night games. Even though Goodell was two votes shy of getting the proposal passed at the recent meetings, he usually gets what he wants and it will probably pass in May. The owners did agree that teams can now play two Thursday night games instead of one.

This is a bad idea for several reasons. Fans who make plans to watch their team play a Sunday night game on the road can have those plans ruined if the game is flexed to Thursday. And the Thursday night games are a safety issue for the players, no matter how much Goodell denies it. And by putting better games on Thursday night, it means they get less exposure because games are streamed on Amazon on Thursday nights, and only subscribers to Amazon’s expensive Prime service can watch.

But it is another sign that the NFL is more interested in the fans who watch on TV than the fans who actually attend games. And Amazon is willing to pay a billion dollars to a league where cash is king.

And then there are the layoffs at NFL Media. The departure of Jim Trotter, one of the most respected reporters in the league, got the most attention. He had asked Goodell the last two years at press conferences about the lack of diversity in NFL Media. Goodell said that had nothing to do with Trotter’s departure, but it wasn’t a good look for NFL Media.

And the layoffs show that in the 20 years since it started, the NFL Network has not been the money-making success the league thought it was going to be. And even though the NFL is hardly strapped for cash with its billion-dollar TV deals, Goodell apparently can’t accept the idea of using NFL Media as a promotional tool for the league.

Meanwhile, Peter King reported the league is going to partner with Skydance Media to create movies and documentaries. But will they make the kind of money the league wants? We will see.

As we know, Goodell cares only about the bottom line. He is so popular with the owners that he is going to get a contract extension that will take him through 2027.

Goodell’s obsession with the bottom line is not a surprise. But we’ve just gotten another reminder of what Goodell cares about.

–It is almost hard to believe the reports the owners are giving Roger Goodell another contract extension at age 64. The league desperately needs new leadership. Pete Rozelle retired at 63 and Paul Tagliabue at 65. The owners like that Goodell keeps bringing in new revenue but he shows little interest in the game on the field or what is good for the game and the fans.

–The Cowboys making a trade with the Texans for Brandin Cooks is a classic example of a team trying to win it all this year making a trade with a team that wants draft picks to build for the future. Cooks will be the Cowboys No. 2 receiver. Trading for Cooks probably means Cowboys aren’t in the market for Odell Beckham. The Texans only got a 2023 fifth round pick and 2024 sixth round pick for Cooks but they dumped his salary although they will pay six million and the Cowboys will pick up the other $12 million. Cooks has now been traded four times and the Cowboys are his fifth team.

–There were questions about whether Tua Tagovailoa had a future in the NFL after the concussion issues he dealt with last year. But the Dolphins are gambling he can stay healthy for at least this season as they exercised the fifth year option on his rookie deal. He will be paid $23.17 million this year. Of course, the Dolphins didn’t give him a new deal because they can’t be sure he will stay healthy. Meanwhile, Mike White will be the backup in case Tagovailoa goes down again.

–The Texans dumped Cooks and his salary but they made Laremy Tunsil the highest paid left tackle in NFL history when he signed three-year $75 million deal with $50 million guaranteed. The Texans figure to take a quarterback with the second pick and obviously want to protect him.

–A player has to know his worth. Safety Chauncey  Johnson turned down a multi year offer from the Eagles and wound up signing for the Lions for less at just $8 million for a year after the market dried up.

–It is all quiet on the Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson front. The Packers are still asking the Jets for a first round pick and more and the two sides are at an impasse for now. Meanwhile, Jackson can’t find a team willing to give up two first round picks and meet his contract demands.

–Two more starting quarterbacks changed teams when Derek Carr signed with New Orleans and Jimmy Garoppolo signed with the Raiders. Is Jimmy G much of an upgrade from Carr? We will find out if both players needed a change of scenery. But the Raiders are in effect trading Jimmy G for Carr. That may not be much of an upgrade for either team. But both players seemed to have worn out their welcome with their former teams.

–Carr’s arrival in New Orleans likely means that Jameis Winston will return to being a backup unless Carr is injured. Winston, who never lived up to the hype when he was the first pick in 2015, spent five years in Tampa and three in New Orleans. Last year, he started the first three games before being replaced by Andy Dalton, who has moved on to Washington. Winston said he wants to remain in New Orleans because he likes the atmosphere. Gardner Minshew signed with Indianapolis and can play if the quarterback the Colts draft with fourth pick – or if they move up for one –isn’t ready. With Minshew moving on, the Eagles signed Marcus Marioto to be their backup.

–Dalton’s signed by Washington and Jacoby Brissett being signed by the Panthers shows both teams want a veteran stopgap in case their young quarterback isn’t ready to go when the  season starts. Dalton can step in if Sam Howell isn’t ready and Brissett is a safety net in case the quarterback the Panthers sign with the first pick isn’t ready at the start of the season.

–Baker Mayfield continued his journey around the league by signing with the Bucs where he will compete for the starting job with Kyle Trask. That means Blaine Gabbert will be looking for a new home.

–Aaron Rodgers is ready to move on to the Jets, opening the door for Jordan Love to be the third Packer starter in decades as he follows in the footsteps of Brett Favre and Rodgers. But the Packers want a first round pick and more for Rodgers,, which is ridiculous for an aging player the Packers don’t want to keep.. So Rodgers can’t move on until the Packers agree to more sensible terms.