18 games and 21 weeks of absolute pointless football is going to crater attendance and viewership for the regular season in my opinion especially if prices dont nose dive. Who is going to watch the starters get benched in quarter 3 every week? How is this going to develop marquee namss for your league? Makes no sense in this state.
If this became a 10-12 game sprint instead maybe it could be interesting? Each game becomes more consequential to the standing that way there would be more jostling in positions? It still doesnt fix how anticlimatic that one team only will miss the playoffs but this maybe is the only to make the regular season somewhat interesting.
Means the season would end much much sooner with far less football in it. But that would for sure eat into the bottom line by cutting home games, however i question how realistic it will be for regualr season games to not have UFL sized crowds now. Also i dont think owners would pay the same salaries for less games. Cflpa isnt going to entertain lower salaries. If the playoffs is all the tv deal cares about then what not redo the regular season in a way that makes it somewhat valuable too?
Also one thought, get rid of this asinine 1 v 2 play in game that nobody will care about. Just have a 3-8 seed first round with the winners of each division getying a bye, proceed from there. Just like the nfl does it, easy peasy.