There’s nothing more alarming than finding out that the guy who sings that catchy little “now my bedsheets smell like you” tune looks like, well, Ed Sheeran. That’s one thing, but now this whimsically-haired muppet is disturbing the NFL schedule, and it’s downright untenable.
Sheeran, the singer of mega pop hits “Shape of You,” and “Thinking Out Loud” (there’s no accounting for taste), has a huge tour that’s going down this fall—and he’s got an appetite for football stadiums. His timing could have been a little better, seeing as how he’s going to be taking up space (as he always does) on Saturdays during the NFL regular season.
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Here’s a breakdown of which teams had to be rescheduled:
So when the NFL set out to make it’s schedule for the upcoming season—which it just released last night—it had to navigate the Sheeran-infested waters because the stadiums likely could not handle the turnaround of a Sheeran Saturday night followed by a Football Sunday.
Initially Detroit Lions president Rod Wood assumed that the Lions would be opening the season on the road because Sheeran was scheduled to play Ford Field on September 8, but instead, they will now open up at home, two days later, on the season’s first installment of Monday Night Football. Wood also told the Detroit Free Press, that he thought it was just the Lions who were getting the Sheeran Effect. Not so, it turns out.
“We had a lot of concerts scheduled this year, so we had a few blackout dates,” Wood said. “I didn’t learn until talking to (NFL scheduling guru Howard Katz), I think Ed Sheeran is in like half of the NFL stadiums this fall so every team had asked for a blackout for Ed Sheeran. I think they actually went to the tour and said you can’t do every Saturday night in the fall. So some of those actually got moved.”
Ed’s not alone, either. Taylor Swift (three) and Beyonce (two) also had concerts that had to be scheduled around, but none more so than Sheeran’s eight.
Say whatever you want about his music—different strokes for different folks—but I think we can all agree that subjecting the nation to a primetime game in the first week of the season between the Lions and the New York Jets is indefensible.
