Divisional Round

Saturday, Jan. 11:
Minnesota Vikings at San Francisco 49ers, 3:35 p.m. (NBC)
Tennessee Titans at Baltimore Ravens, 7:15 p.m (CBS)

Sunday, Jan. 12:
Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs, 2:05 p.m. (CBS)
Seattle Seahawks at Green Bay Packers, 5:40 p.m. (FOX)

I know they bump the games later on Championship weekend, but I don't remember them doing this on the Sunday of the Divisional Round. As far as I can remember it was always a Noon and 3:30 kick for those two games, right? Why did they change it this year?

Sunday's divisional round playoff games previously kicked off at 1 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. Eastern.

The idea behind this change is to provide the league more flexibility in using home teams from the Mountain and Pacific time zones in the early Sunday game, and to prevent those teams from playing at 10 or 11 a.m. in their "home" time zone if they have to travel to the east coast for a divisional round game.

So I found this article.

It seems kinda silly to change things and say this is the reason behind the moves, then the first year you implement the change put the 49ers game at 1pm PST on a Saturday. Seems like they should have had a Sunday game, or the late Saturday game.

He's right in that if it were say week 5 of the NFL season, Packer ratings > 49er ratings. In the playoffs though, the teams playing eachother rarely- if ever- matter in terms of ratings.

:lol: is there anything about the Packers FF wont dramatically overrate?

I agree that it does not matter in the playoffs, even if the megateams like the Patriots or Cowboys are playing.

But overall there are almost certainly more 49ers fans than Packers fans. Northern California and Oregon have some thirty million people living there and the 49ers dominate that turf. The Raiders probably have more fans still in Los Angeles than they do in the Bay Area. The fact that the Packers are the NFL's Official Team of the Trailer Park regardless of geography doesn't make up for all that population difference.

Oregon generally does not support anything Seattle and the 49ers have every bit the national following as the Packers do.

The Bears are in there as well. Bears, Cowboys, Packers, Steelers are probably the most national teams. They can be interchanged at #1-4 depending on how good/bad they currently are.

The Bears do not have a national following. They've been irrelevant for 50 years.

Oregon generally does not support anything Seattle and the 49ers have every bit the national following as the Packers do.

Wrong, and pretty ironic coming from a Packer fan that spends a good portion of his time discussing......The Chicago Bears.

Because I live in Chicago.

If I didn't live in Chicago and someone mentioned Chicago Bears I'd think they were talking about your stable boyfriends.

The Bears do not have a national following. They've been irrelevant for 50 years.

Because I live in Chicago.

The NFL tv schedulers seem to disagree.

Patriots and 49ers are definitely in there too.

Bears are really only in there because the colossal Chicago diaspora. They are not a national team with national appeal.