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NFL Announces Later Kickoff Times for Sunday Late Game

The NFL announced today that the second game of the Sunday double header on either CBS or FOX will be moved back to 3:25 central. In the past, those games have either started at 3:05 or 3:15 central. That meant that sometimes you would miss part of a late game if the Titans game went wrong here locally, or they would cut away from the early game before it was over if the Titans played late.

It also means that we will get to see the end of more games on the networks because they will have more time between games that end on time. That is always fun.

The full press release from the NFL is posted after the jump.

The kickoff time for Sunday late afternoon doubleheader games on CBS and FOX will be moved from 4:15 PM ET to 4:25 PM ET, the NFL announced today. The 4:05 PM ET kickoff time for games not on the doubleheader network will remain unchanged.

The 4:25 PM ET kickoff time will reduce instances in which fans miss the end of a 1:00 PM ET game telecast because they must receive the opening kickoff of their home team’s late-afternoon game. In addition, fans not in the cities of the late doubleheader opponents will be less likely to miss the beginning of the late doubleheader game.

In researching the kickoff time shift, the NFL analyzed games from the 2009-11 seasons and found that 44 games required part of the audience to be switched to a mandatory doubleheader game kickoff. With a 4:25 PM ET kickoff time, that number that would have been reduced by 66 percent to only 15 games.

Approximately 40 games over the full 2012 season will be impacted by the 10-minute kickoff time shift – with half of those moves coming in games played in Mountain or Pacific time zones with 1:25 PM or 2:25 PM local starts.