Friday, April 27, 2007

A 17-Game Regular Season?

That possibility might come sooner than you think. Roger Goodell is just as committed to promoting the NFL in overseas markets as Paul Tagliabue was, and in order to increase the commitment to games played in those markets, there's some early exploration of possibly increasing the regular season to 17 games, the most likely option being getting rid of a pre-season game (not like any one of us out there will really miss them.)

"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?"

Aside from the corporate jargon perversion of the word "inventory," it's a fairly basic idea that will likely go nowhere -- these things always bog down in various NFL committees. I suspect most people out there would think that any extra NFL game that means something is a good thing, as opposed to another meaningless pre-season matchup, but I'm not sure extending the season another game for international games would really help grow the game overseas. We've seen the clear evidence of how the NBA makes inroads in foreign markets with players from Europe and Asia -- I have a hard time believing American football, much as I love it, can translate to those same audiences. We're not exactly hearing about NFL Europe blowing up the world.

NFL Considers 17th Regular Season Game [Washington Post]

(Photo credit: AP, via WashPost)

9 comments:

Larry Brown said...

Most guys can't even make it through a 16 game season...how they supposed to get through 17? Yikes

Mike said...

Football is big in Germany; that's why 5 of the six NFL Europe teams are based there. Germans have even started tailgating at events now. Still, it hasn't really caught on the way the NFL has hoped.

At least with an odd number of games, we can say with certainty which teams suck and which teams don't.

rstiles said...

I have no problem with a 17 game season...the more football the better...

But fuck this shit of taking OUR game overseas...who gives a fuck about playing in London or Sydney or Hong Kong...

The NFL is OUR game...

Fargo Highlife said...

My biggest problem with this idea is that, for those teams that do not play a game overseas, how do you balance out the home/away games? Some teams would have 9 home games and 8 away games, while others would have 9 away/8 home. That's a huge advantage to some teams, creating the same type of imbalance that MLB gets from interleague games.

Anonymous said...

Hahaha it's our game because most of the planet doesn't give a damn about it.

Signal to Noise said...

Larry - I don't know, honestly.

DHB - I think 8-8 is a good measure of sucking. We just excuse it as "mediocrity."

Fargo - that's a good question.

Stiles - it would work in Sydney, with the background of rugby and Aussie rules ball.

randjamal said...

Not sure if this would fly with the owners, who would have the final say. Preseason games are not shared revenue, while regular season games are. Eliminating a preseason game and replacing it with a regular season game takes revenue from the big market teams (NYJ, NYG, Washington, Dallas). On the other hand, the smallest market teams (Buffalo, Jax) would love it since they lose money on preseason games.

the butler said...

Good point Fargo about the home/road game issue.

Guess we should add two more to make it even?

Then Fantasy play-offs would be what, week 18?

The Big Picture said...

meanwhile, could they shorten the nba season to like 41 games so the playoffs don't go until mid june?