Honey, I Shrunk the Schedule

I wasn’t actually trying to shrink the NFL schedule. The whole thing started when I decided the print on my grocery list had become too small to read. This was partly due to advancing age and partly due to my habit of writing grocery lists with a dull, well-worn crayon. Faced with the choice of admitting age might be catching up with me or locating the ballpoint pen that was probably lying in plain sight, I did what any responsible scientist would do: I built a machine to enlarge the print.

The machine itself was a masterpiece of modern engineering, assuming your definition of “modern engineering” includes a toaster oven thermostat, part of a lawn sprinkler, and a broken VCR tape deck I’d been saving since the Reagan administration. After three weeks of construction and only two small electrical fires, the Enlarging Ray was ready for testing.

I pushed the GO button. There was a bright flash, a loud pop, and a smell like a football player’s jockstrap being run through a toaster. I didn’t anticipate that level of pyrotechnics. Scientists have technical terms for these situations. The term I used at the time was considerably shorter — about four letters long.

When the smoke cleared, I discovered that the machine had achieved unexpected results. My grocery list had indeed been enlarged, but to absurd proportions — approximately billboard size. More importantly, anything within a three-foot radius of the machine seemed to have been affected in the opposite direction. The 2026 NFL schedule, which happened to be lying within that radius, had been compressed into a tiny, neat, single-page schedule.

Unfortunately, no one is interested in my new grocery list, which is all just as well, since I’m not able to get it out of the workshop door. NFL fans, however, appear delighted with the 2026 One Page NFL Schedule. To download a schedule, click the blue NFL Schedules button below, or select NFL Schedules from the Football Weblog menu. I’m sure you’ll like it as much as swimming in a bowl of Cheerios.