Report: NFL Could Move Games to Saturday if College Football is Postponed

NFL officials have discussed giving the league flexibility to move more games to Saturdays if the college football season is postponed, according to the New York Post's Andrew Marchand. 

Per Marchand, the NFL has had "preliminary discussions" with its broadcast partners about the possibility of moving games. The NFL already schedules Saturday games, but only after the college football regular season concludes in December. 

It will only consider the move fully, per Marchand, if college football is delayed or canceled because of COVID-19.

The NFL's schedule is expected to be released on May 9, but the schedule itself may be altered amid the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this week, the Sports Business Journal reported that the NFL has also put together a contingency plan for a schedule that has a regular season starting in mid-October, a season with no bye weeks and a Feb. 28 Super Bowl. Goodell told Good Morning America that the league will be ready to "make alternatives" if needed.

An April 15 report from the Washington Post's Mark Maske said that the schedule will account for the possibility of games being lost by a delayed start.

“The schedule is being done in such a way that builds in that flexibility,” a person familiar with the NFL's planning told the Post.

According to an early April report from Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger, college football industry executives are also "already creating contingency plans for a nuclear fall of no football."

“The discussion that ADs are having about fall sports being canceled is a very real possibility,” Ramogi Huma, the president of the National College Players Association told Sports Illustrated. “It’s extremely hard to imagine any football in the fall on any level.”

“We’re doing all sorts of modeling on what the football season may look like, from a delayed start to no fans to pushing the entire season into the winter or spring,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said to Sports Illustrated. “We could end up throwing it all away, and that would be great, but we can’t afford to wait until the last minute to think about it. We’re trying to think of any way to keep the season alive, because of the economic engine it is for so many other sports. This year, it could be an economic engine on steroids.”