The National Football League (NFL) season begins the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Traditionally, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon. Exceptions are one game each week being played on Sunday night, and another game being played on Monday night, known as Monday Night Football. For the last few weeks of the regular season (after the NCAA football regular season has concluded), the league typically schedules one or two additional nationally-televised games on Saturday or Thursday evenings.
In addition, the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions each traditionally host a game on Thanksgiving Day. In 2006, a third game was scheduled for that same day in primetime.
