The majority of NFL games are played on Sunday, and depending upon what part of the continental United States you live on, those games could start as early as 10 AM Pacific time, or as late as 4:25 PM Eastern time, with an additional evening game typically at 8:30 PM Eastern time. The NFL has 32 teams, of which 17 are in the Eastern time zone, 8 are in the Central time zone, 2 are in the Mountain time zone, and the balance of 5 teams beginning in the 2016 season are in the Pacific time zone. In every other major sport, except for the NFL, the game time of the sport is typically based on the time zone that the team is located in, so that in basketball the Washington Wizards game would typically start at 7:05 PM Eastern time, whereas the Chicago Bulls game would typically start at 7:05 PM Central time, which is 8:05 Eastern time, the Denver Nuggets game would typically start at 7:05 PM Mountain time, which is 9:05 Eastern time, and the Los Angeles Lakers game would typically start at 7:05 PM Pacific time, which is 10:05 Eastern time, thereby essentially making each of the games tipping off at the exact same local time, which makes sense, because if 7:05 PM is in the NBA's opinion the best time to schedule a game, they then make sure to schedule it for that local time in all of the markets that the NBA has teams. On the other hand, the NFL, breaks down their time schedule into essentially two zones, to which the Eastern and Central-based teams typically have their games scheduled at 1 PM Eastern time, which means the Central division home games at actually being held at 12 PM in their respective time zone, and these two time zones as of 2016 season encompass 25 out of the 32 teams. The Pacific and Mountain-based teams typically have their games around 4:15PM Eastern time, or 1:15PM Pacific time, and therefore 2:15PM Mountain time, for the balance of the 7 out of the 32 teams. Because of the game time structure as well as the fact that there are many more teams located on the Eastern and Central time zones, most of the NFL games on any given Sunday are the "early" games, meaning that there are far fewer selectionsto watch in the afternoon games. In addition, probably not taken into account often enough, when a West coast team visits an East coast team, the visiting team is typically playing the East coast team at 1 PM Eastern time, which equates to 10 AM Pacific time, probably giving the East coast team, an additional small percentage of favor against their West coast opponent.
In any given sport, and the NFL is no different, people that live in close proximity to a given NFL team, have a more abiding interest in that local team, so that it makes much more sense that schedules should reflect that fact, indicating that first off, if 1PM is the magic local time for games to be played at on the Eastern and Western coasts, it should also be the magic time to be played at for the Mountain and Central time games. Additionally, with the exception of games not coming into conflict against the late Sunday night game, NFL teams should have more flexibility to determine their game times so as to maximize their revenue and viewership, in addition to the fact that the NFL should make a concerted effort to have far fewer games scheduled at 10 AM Pacific Time for America's most popular sport. The bottom line is the NFL needs to take a much more discriminating look at their game times, as by so doing, viewership and interest should incrementally increase.