It sounds like you’re under the impression that more people watch TAR than the NFL, which is pretty funny. You have your amounts backward. Catering to the NFL while delaying TAR means now instead of having a buttload of pissed-off viewers, there are only a few.
And as already pointed out several times, it isn’t about the NFL at all, at least almost never. It’s about 60 Minutes. The NFL afternoon games almost never bleed into primetime. (I think they did once last season, the first time in years.)
In the family season – if there had been a family season, of course, which there wasn’t because that would’ve been a travesty – they would have camped on the Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park, here in Philly – maybe 15 minutes from my house.