On one hand, I'm like all of you: Pumped to watch the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks open up their season on Wednesday night at CenturyLink Field against the New England Patriots in a Super Bowl rematch.

I'm excited for fall in Seattle, excited for the raising of the championship banner, and like a lot of 36-year-old guys, I'm just excited for football to be back.

And make no mistake, I'm excited that I get to watch the Seattle Mariners play the Texas Rangers in the day (1:10 p.m. PT) before transitioning to the Seahawks and Patriots at night. I'm thrilled that Seattle fans get a rare doubleheader and that local businesses will get the bump from it all. It will be a truly special day in Seattle sports.

But on the other hand, I also hate the way that NFL operates. And how does it operate? Like nothing else exists, including the Mariners and their long-established schedule.

Think about this for a second. The Mariners schedule for this season came out before the 2025 season was over. Everyone has known about the Mariners schedule for nearly a calendar year at this point. When the NFL schedule came out in May, everyone had known about the Mariners schedule for eight months or so.

The Mariners and Rangers were scheduled to play a night game on Wednesday. The NFL didn't care. That really bothers me. I love football, but the football-ification of everything does rub me the wrong way. Sorry if that makes me soft or something. It's true.

The Mariners were supposed to be going for their second consecutive American League West title this season, and this game could have been a big game in that season-long quest. The Mariners deserved to have a night game in front of a full building, instead of a mid-week day game that will likely be sparsely attended since local schools have already started again and parents will be working.

The Mariners and Rangers were already scheduled for a getaway day game on Thursday, so the NFL could have created this same scenario without impacting the Mariners game at all. But instead, they had to put the Seahawks on Wednesday in order to have their precious San Francisco 49ers-Los Angeles Rams game in Australia air on Thursday.

The NFL is a money-making machine, and it doesn't care what's in its path when the Brinks Trucks are rolling up, and that just really bothers me. 

Given that the Mariners are essentially out of the playoff race, this is all much more of a moot point, but I'll continue to fight the good fight that the NFL should not be bulldozing everything in its path. And it goes way beyond the Mariners. I feel this way every single time something like this happens.

The Mariners shouldn't have been forced to move Wednesday's should have been important game, and fans who were excited about attending it shouldn't have been forced to skip out because of the time change.

The Mariners and Rangers begin their series on Tuesday night at 6:40 p.m. PT.

The latest edition of the 'Refuse to Lose Territory' podcast is out, talking about the M's rotation woes, if Lazaro Montes and Michael Arroyo should play every day now, and if the M's really have a chance at the playoffs.

You can listen here, or you can watch in the YouTube player below.