🦃 The Truth Behind the NFL’s Failed Thanksgiving Experiment

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I’m not sure how many of you will read this, given the long weekend, but I still wanted to provide you with some fodder for small talk as you hopefully spend time with family this weekend.

Tired: Explaining what a tariff is to your uncle

Wired: Breaking down the science behind why jersey numbers make fat guys look skinny

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: Why Fans Should Be Excited About College Football’s $22M Problem

📉 Biggest Loser: The Truth Behind the NFL’s Failed Thanksgiving Experiment

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How Football Players Are Tricking You With Their Jersey Numbers

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🗞 The Big Story

College football is about to have a $22 million per year problem, but this new solution could end up being incredible for all of its fans.

Background: If you recall, earlier this year, the NCAA settled a lawsuit that will allow all Division I schools to share revenue with players for the first time in history.

Beginning in 2025, schools will be able to pay around $22 million per year, or 22% of the average Power Four school’s athletic revenue directly to their players.

There’s just one problem:

Not every Division I school makes enough money to afford that.

The Issue: Sure, top programs like Texas, Ohio State, and Alabama can easily afford it, but what about the smaller schools or the universities that don’t even have a football team — which is usually responsible for 50-75% of an athletic department’s revenue?

Usually, those schools operate at a loss every year, and they likely don’t have the money on hand to pay their players the $22 million per year that’s required to stay competitive.

So what do they do?

Well, there have been a few ideas floating around, but only one of them actually benefits the fans.

Potential Solutions: For example, Ohio State has suggested adding more corporate sponsorships, such as a stadium naming rights deal and jersey patches.

Meanwhile, this September, the University of Tennessee announced that it will start implementing a 10% “talent fee” on all football tickets — a plan that the school’s athletic director hopes will help raise $10 million per year.

Similarly, Arkansas has already begun charging a 3% fee on all concession stand purchases.

However, the one idea that I’m actually excited about is the one that is finally pushing more schools to start selling alcohol at football games.

See, as of last year 20% of Power Five schools still didn’t sell alcohol to the general public, and these weren’t just universities in Utah.

Before 2024, schools that still banned alcohol sales at football games included:

• Georgia

• Michigan

• Auburn

• Wisconsin

However, as UNC has shown in the last five years, when it finally started selling alcohol, schools can make an extra $4-5M per year because of it.

Talk about a win-win.

📉 Biggest Loser

The only reason the Arizona Cardinals exist is because of the NFL’s biggest failed Thanksgiving experiment.

Background: In 1966, Dallas Cowboys GM Tex Schramm volunteered his team to host a second Thanksgiving game to earn extra publicity.

And after 9 years of hosting this game, the Dallas Cowboys had become one of the most popular teams in the country.

However, NFL commissioner Pete Rozell thought the league could do better — which is why in 1975, he took away the Cowboys’ hosting privileges on Thanksgiving and replaced them with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Rise & Fall: Now, Rozell’s reasoning for this was simple: The Cardinals were one of the NFL’s most dynamic teams, earning the nickname “Cardiac Cardinals” for their exciting comeback wins and revolutionary pass-first offense.

However, in their first year hosting a Thanksgiving game on national TV, the 7-3 Cardinals got blown out by the inferior Buffalo Bills 32-14.

The following year, the team lost again on the road in Dallas, but they were awarded the chance to redeem themselves in 1977 by hosting a second Thanksgiving Day game.

However, even though the team entered the game 7-3, they got blown out again on national TV, this time by the Miami Dolphins 55-14.

The Cardinals went on to lose every other game that season, missing the playoffs entirely.

Move from St. Louis: Expect for one strike-shortened season in 1982, the Cardinals never made the playoffs again in St. Louis.

According to reports at the time, commissioner Pete Rozelle had grown frustrated with the Cardinals’ embarrassing Thanksgiving performances, which apparently contributed to his allowing the team to leave St. Louis over a decade later.

But who knows, maybe if Cardinals would have won just one of those games, St. Louis would have never lost its team and we wouldn’t be stuck watching the Cowboys play on Thanksgiving every year.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The player on the left is thinner than DeVonta Smith (right)… and it’s all because of his jersey number.

Background: Up until 2004, NFL wide receivers were only allowed to wear numbers in the 80s, but then the league changed the rules, allowing them to pick any number between 10 and 19.

And within a few years, nearly 80% of all NFL wide receivers had made the switch…

But why?

Well, a lot of players said they just thought it looked better or made them look thinner, but some players made a really interesting comment.

They said they felt faster when the number was smaller — but there’s no way this could be a real thing, right?

Lower Jersey Number = Thinner? A UCLA psychology professor studied this and what she found was fascinating.

She would show people images of football players of various body types in a random jersey number and had them rate the players on a scale from skinny to fat.

She found that lower numbers were strongly associated with thinness. Even in the tiniest differences, like between 19 and 17, the player wearing 17 was perceived as thinner and, therefore, faster than the player wearing 19.

But she found even more than that because while you might think that it’s not the numbers that matter but just the width of the numbers - you’d be wrong.

In fact, when this UCLA professor tested numbers with the same digits but reversed them—for example, 18 compared to 81—the results were the same.

People perceived the athlete wearing number 18 to be thinner than the athlete wearing 81.

But now, with players being allowed to wear the number 0, the lowest number of them all, I’m curious if the effect really does hold true on with players wearing 0 vs. 1…

⏱ In Other News

• Conor McGregor is a rapist (not defamation)

• MLB playoff payout hits a record-high

• The problem with the WNBA expansion draft

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👋 Happy Friday! If you’re reading a sports business newsletter the day after Thanksgiving, you’re a true sicko like me, and I respect the hell out of it.

Enjoy the rest of your long weekend!