The 2022 GSL season certainly feels like it’s getting closer, although still four months away, as the league’s regular schedule has been released.

The 2022 GSL season opens in Arizona, as the defending champion Arizona Eagles host their new South division foe, the San Antonio Texans on Thursday February 17, 2022. The GSL had previously planned for seasons to start two weeks after the Super Bowl, but, with the NFL adding a 17th game to their season, pushing Super Bowl LVI back to Sunday February 13th, the GSL decided to keep it’s start date to mid February, now starting the Thursday after the Super Bowl.

The league is retaining its 18 game schedule, but adding 72 additional regular season games with the league expanding from 24 to 32 teams in 2022. This will shape up to be a big season for the GSL, as 32 teams was the long term goal set out when the league started in 2020.

With the addition of new teams comes some changes to scheduling rotations. In 2021, similar to the 2021 season, each team will play a home and away series within the same division. The 2022 season will retain the Eastern and Western conferences, but with an added division to each conference, bringing each conference to four divisions each. Like last year, each team will play all teams from two divisions within their own conference, and all teams from one division in the opposing conference. Home and away games for the conference and non-conference games will alternate.

Another change to scheduling this season will include the addition of more Saturday Night games to the schedule. Starting Easter weekend, in week 9, through the rest of the season Saturday night games are either currently scheduled, or are available for flex scheduling. From weeks 14 to 19, the Saturday night games are not currently scheduled, but games will be moved to the primetime slot depending on current playoff races. Week 19 will have two available flex scheduling slots; one on Saturday night, and the other Sunday night, if needed.

Easter Sunday will again see three matchups on April 17th, with all other non-Thursday and Monday games in week 9 being played Saturday. The Easter slate includes Wisconsin @ Chicago at 1:00PM, Dallas @ Albuquerque at 4:30PM, and Louisville @ Kansas City in the primetime slot at 8:15PM.

Other noteworthy games are the Sunday Night game on Mothers Day weekend, featuring Oakland @ Albuquerque on Sunday May 8th, and the Memorial Day Classic at 2:30PM Monday May 30th, featuring Baltimore @ Washington.

The league has also announced that there will be five international series games in 2022. The three sites from last season, Berlin, London, and Mexico City, will again have games in 2022. The new cities to feature GSL games for 2022 include Rome, Italy, and Tokyo, Japan. The international series games are yet to all be finalized.

The 2022 GSL Schedule is available on the GSL website.

Austin Snelick
October 13, 2021