“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
Those words were penned nearly 2000 years ago by the Apostle Paul, and are they any less true today? They certainly couldn’t be truer today in the NFL. The NFL published its 2026 regular-season schedules for all 32 teams last Thursday. Yes, the competitive league that loves to talk about its parity had produced another schedule that revealed its chief motivation was honoring fairness in competition, in rest days, and in allowing teams to prepare for their next opponents equally.
Uh, hardly. Don’t you know sarcasm when you hear it, Charlie Brown? Immediately upon looking at the schedule, some things should jump out to us. The first being that there are a record nine International games being played in the 2026 season. It continues to increase, and why does the NFL do this? Because it is good for the players? They do it to make more global money off the players.
Team staff, coaches, and players have to travel overseas and back, and guess what? Now some of those teams have to play the very next week. You see, the NFL used to promise the clubs, “Look, if you play these games overseas, we promise you a bye week the next week.” Well, not anymore. Because the NFL giveth and the NFL taketh away.
The NFL cares only about how much money they can make in a season, and that is at the expense (pun intended) of each team it affects. Who cares, do you hear the cash register ringing?
Did you see what the NFL did to the Los Angeles Chargers? They will have 24 fewer rest days than their 2026 opponents. How in the world did the NFL schedule makers allow that to happen? They “allowed” it to happen more than a few times, making decisions based upon how much money they were going to make and not caring about what is fair to the Chargers. That’s right, if the NFL is really attempting to organize the best competitive season possible in terms of scheduling integrity and fairness in rest, then how did they also end up with a new record of 110 games will be played, where one team has a rest advantage over their opponent? That’s 40 percent!
That’s right, the NFL is approaching half of its games being played where one team is disadvantaged? Don’t you see how unjust that is? Don’t you see how it clearly reveals the NFL is not as concerned with fair and balanced weekly competition as they have led us to believe?
Can you believe what NFL analyst Warren Sharp stated this weekend, that there are an inconceivable 69 games scheduled this next season where one team will have a competitive rest advantage of at least three games? Not one, not two, but three games?
When the schedule makers were in that room coming up with this season’s schedule, and they were discussing the possibilities and options, how many times do you think words were vocally spoken, such as equity, honesty, impartiality, integrity, fairness, propriety, fair and balanced?
Likewise when seeing the lack of competitive balance and scheduling integrity, how many were heard to speak up against such dishonesty, disregard, and disrespect, demanding the chief motivation be competitive fairness?
“But look how much more money we can make. Why should we care about an honest and honorably fair schedule?”
This article originally appeared on Commanders Wire: 2026 NFL schedule: What motivates NFL schedule makers?