A recent discussion on this sub about primetime game variety has led me down the rabbit hole to think about games that have been played under the lights.

Like don’t you think it’s odd the Lions have gone to Lambeau in 4 of past 5 seasons on primetime? That’s really strange that this particular game in that location for the past little while has regularly been on primetime tv (excluding Thanksgiving)

And yet, in the entire 50+ year history of primetime football, the Lions and Vikings have a total of 4 conventional matchups on primetime: 1971 and 1983 on MNF, and 1992 and 1996 on SNF. (If you want to know the records, it’s 2-2).

That’s it. Very strange that despite being continuous division rivals for over 50 years, you can count the number of times they’ve played each other on prime time on one hand.* If we talk about a lack of primetime matchup variety cough Giants vs Cowboys this matchup needs to be circled on national tv next season as a must have. No question

*There is a small asterisk to this, the Vikings and lions did play a game on a Thursday night non Thanksgiving game in the year 2000, but this was prior to the advent of Thursday night football as a regularly scheduled program in 2006, so I didn’t count it. But in any case, it’s still been well over 20 years since these teams have met each other on national TV on primetime, they’ve certainly never met as NFC North opponents

If I really spent time trying to look I’m sure that there would be only a handful of current divisional matchups that have been played less on primetime, most probably involving expansion teams. I would absolutely guess that this certainly is the least played divisional matchup on primetime for two teams that have been in the same division for every year since 1970.

How strange.