Roger Goodell is wearing bad idea blue jeans again. The NFL is making a major push towards expanding to Europe and beyond (the first regular season game played in Europe will take place in London this year between the Dolphins and the Giants) and the in order to “create more inventory,” the NFL is considering expanding the regular season to 17 games by shortening the preseason.
One negative [to playing overseas games] is you’re taking a game away from fans here,” Goodell said before an annual meeting of sports editors at league headquarters in New York. “We’ve discussed whether to cut one preseason game and add a 17th week. It would create more inventory, and that has some appeal. We’re chewing on that. The issue is: How do you create more inventory?
Translation: how can we line our pockets with more dough? The NFL sees the international appeal of basketball and baseball and wants a piece. But the problem here is that you can’t add European or Asian games without putting a huge burden on the teams that have to travel. Unlike baseball and basketball where you can have a terrible road trip and just shake it off with a nice homestand, the short NFL season and grueling games make it so much harder for teams to rebound.
Some might argue that a trip to Europe would be like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers traveling to Seattle for a game. Yes, it’s about the same distance, but how many times have you picked against a team in your office pool (and we know you have an office pool) because they had to travel all the way across the country in the previous week or had to travel for a Monday Night game? Plus, if you had a team other than an east coast team flying to Europe, it’d be an even longer distance to traverse.
The NFL desire to expand to Europe is a great idea… for the owners. Sure, we’ve been clamoring for one less preseason game, but that was to minimize injury risk in meaningless games, not to create an extra game we can’t even attend. This cash grab is not in the best interest of the game.
And finally, what would 17 games do to all our records? We’d have more asterisks than a Barry Bonds wikipedia entry.
Links:
[Washington Post]: NFL Considers 17th Regular Season Game
6 replies on “17 regular season NFL games?”
17 game season…….. — Interesting topic and lot’s of angles……..
I like them getting rid of ANY-Preseason fake phony game.
I’d rather see 17 real games and 3 fake games than 16 real games
and 4 fake games.
As for records– yeah that happens, but it has happened many times before.
Travel would be a bitch so the schedule would have to be really worked on.
But hey, the bottom line is that it’s all about $$$ and Euro’s and just in case anybody still had ANY idyllic delusions that this was just a sport, a game, or that fans were anything more than customers—– and that the NFL was not just a big business — this should just be another nail in that coffin.
Here’s my idea… — Option A)
Keep the preseason as is…
we cut the times down from 4 15 min quarters to 2 15 min halves.
No Europe games, but we make our own European NFL. The Euro Champ and the Super Bowl Champ will meet in the World Bowl.
Option B)
Cut the number of preseason games in half.
One game per year will play in Europe, with the usually 18 game schedule. Nothing else changes.
The ideal solution — No NFL overseas and only 3 preseason games.
I think Redskins fans will agree that preseason is good for player injuries.
I’m surprised they haven’t gone to — 17 games and/or expanded playoffs already. Hell, we’ll watch football until the beginning of March.
why 17? — Why not 18?
18 Games would be better — No game outside the US. Cut the preseason by half playing only 2 games. Play 18 regular games with 2 byes (making 20 weeks). Start the season on the last weekend in August.