NFL worked Eagles' schedule around Pope visiting Philadelphia
If playing three of the first four games on the road seems unfair, there's a good explanation for the schedule shaking out that way: That's how the Pope wanted it. (Sort of.)
Here's how the Eagles open the 2015 season: At Atlanta in Week 1, host the Cowboys in Week 2, then at the Jets and at the Redskins in Weeks 3 and 4. And if playing three of the first four games on the road seems unfair, there's a good explanation for the schedule shaking out that way: That's how the Pope wanted it.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. Here are the details, via TheMMQB.com's Peter King.
Last July, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput wrote to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell asking the league not to play in Philadelphia on Sunday, Sept. 27 because Pope Francis is scheduled to hold mass for some two million people on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway outside the Philadelphia Art Museum.
“Yes,” NFL senior vice president of broadcasting Howard Katz told King. “The pope did influence the NFL schedule. My name may be Katz, but I wasn’t taking any chances.”
All told, Katz and his colleagues worked through 37,793 versions of the schedule before settling on the one the NFL released Tuesday.
