The Battle Over an 18th NFL Game - Front Office Sports

Morning Edition

April 2, 2025

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said an 18th regular-season NFL game is “certainly” in the future. The league faces heavy resistance from players, however, paving the path for a contentious showdown in the coming years.

Also: David Rumsey will be in Augusta for The Masters all next week bringing you behind the scenes. Email him at david@frontofficesports.com if you’ll be there and want to connect.

—Eric Fisher and Colin Salao

Goodell, Owners Signal 18-Game NFL Season Is Coming—Eventually

Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

PALM BEACH, Fla. — An 18-game NFL regular season was not a major topic at this week’s annual meeting, but it’s increasingly looking like a foregone conclusion that team owners will pursue it—and perhaps soon.

Much of this week’s agenda involved pursuing growth in some fashion, whether it be flag football, international play, or media rights. The season itself looks quite likely to ultimately become part of that wave.

“Certainly it’s in the future,” said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. “I know the potential. But there are several things that I can see in the future that are potential. I also know that … things can take time.”

League commissioner Roger Goodell was more measured in his comments late Tuesday on the 18-game season, but he also pointed to that being a topic of rising interest around the league.

“We continue to analyze and discuss this,” Goodell said. “We are thinking about a lot of things in the context of our season structure.”

The commissioner’s remarks on the potential season expansion followed a busy Tuesday morning with the adoption—and tabling—of several proposed rule changes.

Despite these sentiments, getting that 18th game will require a deal with the NFL Players Association, which has been increasingly opposed to the idea, largely due to health and safety concerns. At February’s Super Bowl LIX, union executive director Lloyd Howell said, “When I have talked to players over the last two seasons, no one wants to play an 18th game.”

The expanded regular season is also fundamentally intertwined with the near-certainty that the NFL will opt out of its current domestic media rights deals in 2029. Having more inventory to sell would strengthen a negotiating position that is already unrivaled in U.S. television.

“I’m more optimistic about how it grows here than I was when I first came into the NFL in 1989, and any period in between. I see a lot of positive growth,” Jones said about the league’s future media rights.

More Holiday Gifts

The NFL also confirmed plans to air a third Christmas Day game in 2025, building on the doubleheader held last year. Netflix will again stream two games as part of its current three-year rights deal, while Amazon will also stream one, given that the holiday falls on a Thursday this year. Amazon is the existing rights holder for the Thursday Night Football package.

The move will look to build upon an average of more than 24 million for last year’s doubleheader, which set a league streaming record. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos was on-site for the NFL annual meeting this week, detailing owners on the fast-changing media landscape. Between the existing rights deal, the NFL’s expanding global ambitions, and Netflix’s still-rising status as the world’s largest streamer, the company figures to be a core part of the league’s long-term future.

The teams involved in those games will be revealed with the 2025 schedule release in May.

A New Era in Measurement

The league, meanwhile, formally approved its expected move to end chain crews as the primary means to measure first-down yardage. Instead, the NFL will use Sony’s Hawk-Eye virtual measurement technology to determine the distance between spotted balls and first-down markers.

The Hawk-Eye technology is already used in a variety of other sports for similar applications, particularly for line calls in tennis. NFL chain crews will remain on the sidelines as a backup.

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Alexis Ohanian Bid on NFL Flag Football, Serena Williams Exploring Franchise

Palm Beach Post

The NFL’s planned pro flag football leagues are already attracting superstar investors.

Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six venture capital firm has submitted a bid to the league’s request for proposal seeking investors in men’s and women’s pro flag football leagues, an NFL spokesman confirmed to Front Office Sports Tuesday night. Separately, Serena Williams has publicly expressed her interest in owning one of the first flag franchises.

The league is receiving a lot of “interest and enthusiasm” from potential backers of the planned men’s and women’s flag football leagues, added the NFL spokesperson. The NFL wants to invest in the leagues but have other partners operate them, sources said. Once the leagues are operational, the NFL plans to sell media packages to current or new rights partners, media czar Brian Rolapp told FOS during Super Bowl week.

Williams and WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark appeared at a women’s sports panel during this week’s NFL’s owners meetings in Florida.

Serena and Venus Williams are minority owners of the Miami Dolphins.

Alexis Ohanian declined a request for comment.

Olivia Miles Delays WNBA Dreams: Why She Chose the Transfer Portal

Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Olivia Miles (5) celebrates a three-pointer as TCU Horned Frogs face off with Notre Dame Fighting Irish during the Sweet 16 at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday, March 29, 2025.

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Following a loss to TCU in the Sweet 16 on Saturday, Notre Dame star guard Olivia Miles said she was “leaning towards” declaring for the 2025 WNBA draft despite having another year of college eligibility.

It made sense. Miles was the projected No. 2 overall pick in the draft in two weeks. She would likely have been selected by the Seattle Storm, a franchise with four WNBA championships, where she would follow in the footsteps of Sue Bird.

Then, on Monday night, Miles suddenly changed course. ESPN reported the 22-year-old chose to forego the draft and enter the NCAA transfer portal. The 180-degree turn from a top prospect highlights the instability in women’s basketball, particularly in the transition from college to the pros.

Why Stay in College?

When Miles inevitably enters the 2026 WNBA draft, she may not be selected as high as she could have been this year. But she may get paid a lot more.

In October, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association opted out of its current collective bargaining agreement with the WNBA that expires after this season. The players are seeking a significant pay increase.

Nearly every player in the league will be a free agent next offseason in the hopes of signing a much larger contract once the league’s record-setting 11-year, $2.2 billion media-rights deal takes effect in 2026—every player except those on rookie contracts.

It’s unclear whether the CBA changes will affect rookie deals, but 2025 rookies are at risk of locking into some of the WNBA’s cheapest contracts until 2028. If Miles were selected with the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, she would sign a four-year, $348,198 deal, an average annual value of $87,050, per Spotrac. The 2025 minimum salary is $66,079.

Why Transfer?

Miles’s decision was also surprising since she decided to enter the transfer portal rather than run it back in Notre Dame.

A few factors that could have influenced Miles’s decision:

House v. NCAA settlement aftermath: The basketball programs at Notre Dame are prime candidates to be affected by the new revenue-sharing rules if it decides to delegate the majority of its funds to its prized football program.

For more on why Olivia Miles could have chosen to transfer, read Colin Salao’s full story here.

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Carli Lloyd on Her Work Ethic and IVF Journey

Two-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist Carli Lloyd joins Leslie Osborne and Arielle Houlihan to talk about her storied career on the U.S. women’s national team, learning to embrace vulnerability and loss of control through her experiences with IVF, and now raising her 5-month-old daughter.

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Women’s Elite Eight Ratings Down 53%, Still Top Pre–Caitlin Clark Years

James Snook-Imagn Images

The women’s March Madness ratings trend continues: down from the Caitlin Clark–driven 2024 tournament but up compared to other years.

The Sweet 16 games averaged 1.7 million viewers across ESPN networks, the second-most-watched Sweet 16 on record. Last year still holds the record with a 2.4 million average inflated by the 6.9 million viewers for Iowa vs. Colorado on ABC. This year’s viewership is down 29% but up 39% from the 1.2 million in 2023.

The 2025 ratings were driven by the ABC doubleheader on Saturday afternoon. Texas and Tennessee, which tipped at 3:30 p.m. ET, drew 2.9 million viewers. The TCU vs. Notre Dame game that preceded it drew 2.5 million viewers.

UConn was not involved in the most-watched game of the round for the first time in this tournament, though it’s in part because their game did not get the free TV slot. Their Saturday afternoon game against Oklahoma, which saw Paige Bueckers drop 40 points, drew 1.9 million viewers on ESPN.

Maryland vs. South Carolina was the most-watched game from the Friday slate, which averaged 1.7 million viewers on ESPN.

ESPN games this year were down just 3% compared to last year.

Elite Eight

This year’s quarterfinals were also the second-most-watched iteration of the round with a 2.9 million viewership average. They were down significantly (53%) from the 6.2 million viewers last year, though up 34% from 2023. Despite the decline compared to last year, all four of this year’s games are among the 10 most-watched Elite Eight games on record.

Ratings for this year’s Elite Eight games:

UCLA vs. LSU (ABC): 3.4 million
South Carolina vs. Duke (ABC): 3.1 million
UConn vs. South Carolina (ESPN): 3 million
Texas vs. TCU (ESPN): 2.3 million

Last year’s Elite Eight featured the rivalry game between Clark and Iowa vs. Angel Reese and LSU, a rematch of the 2023 national championship game, which drew 12.3 million viewers on ESPN. It was the most-watched women’s basketball game on record at the time, surpassed only by Iowa’s Final Four and title games that followed.

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