Richard Sherman, all-Pro cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks and outspoken footballer best known for his trash-talking (though in all honesty, his hot head has cooled in recent years), penned a column in The Players’ Tribune recently that expressed his disdain for the idea of Thursday night football and the allegedly exploitive nature of playing games on a weekday.

This isn’t the first instance of a player complaint about the notion of Thursday night games, rather just the latest. I don’t agree with Richard Sherman on much. As a fan of the Green Bay Packers, I don’t carry a lot of love for either him or the Seahawks (by the way, how about that 38-10 beat down, eh?). I do have to note his argument and lend my own consensus: playing NFL games on Thursdays are not in the best interest of players.

To be fair, I’ve never played football, in-school, amateurly, or professionally. I’m an avid fan of the game, but fate and circumstance met at a conflux to keep me out of helmets and shoulder pads. I am, however, an athlete, running both track and cross country for three years in high school and continuing to run recreationally in college.

In his article, Sherman highlights his weekly schedule, walking through a day-by-day schedule that demonstrates the necessity of a six-day work week in the NFL: "That’s why the quality of play has been so poor on Thursday nights this season. We’ve seen blowouts, sloppy play and games that have been almost unwatchable — and it’s not the players’ faults." This notion seems to make sense.

As a runner there was always a clear distinction for me between the track and cross country seasons. Cross country races are longer (3.1 miles vs. 2 miles) than track races, but the biggest difference was always in the schedule. In cross country we worked out five days a week, raced on Saturday, and rested on Sunday. Meets were nearly always on Saturday which allowed the coaches to flesh out a comprehensive schedule that could be used and reused week in and week out. Track was never quite the same. Besides the shorter distance, we also had meets scattered all over the place. Sometimes they were on Saturday. Often they weren’t. They’d be on Tuesday, Thursday, or any day that the host school pleased.

As a runner, I and the teammates who also did both sports often complained about the frequency and the proximity of track meets. They were so close. They were so irregular. The schedule wasn’t ever a schedule; it was whatever we could work in that would allow us to strengthen and sharpen our skills without totally killing us from exhaustion and/or injury. The coaches hated it too; they couldn’t establish a rhythm to teach us and it made their work week just as hard to predict.

In this vein, I’m in agreement with Richard Sherman. American football is an incredibly intensive sport, and having only one game a week (as opposed to the other major league sports which often have multiple) makes sense. Tampering with a schedule that gives a full week’s recuperation to the player’s also does the sport no good, besides the fact that people are still willing to watch football on Thursday and thus the NFL will still make money.

Thursday night football is not some sacred or revered tradition in the game. In fact, it’s a relative newcomer, with the NFL’s Thursday Night Football programming firing up for the first time in 2006. Truthfully it can be changed. What’s one more game a diehard fan has to watch on the weekend instead of a weekday? Maybe some fans would even appreciate that, considering then they wouldn’t have to stay up late and fall asleep at work or school the next day, just to watch their favorite team play. Or, if the NFL is so dead set on setting aside a separate day to host marquee matchups, why not take Sherman’s suggestion and set a bye week for each team the week before playing on Thursday? That solution would still allow the NFL to control as much of the weekday sports calendar as possible without risking anything for its players.

Will the NFL listen to Richard Sherman? They should. For better or for worse Sherman’s a voice in the NFL, and a smart one at that. Just about any Stanford grad is. The “bye week compromise” presented by Sherman would solve the issue and ensure both parties see a positive outcome in a world that at times seems to be increasingly breathing down the neck of American football.