Spring football?
by Ryan Van Bibber on Oct 15, 2008 2:09 PM CDT
in Events
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PrintTalk of adding a 17th game to the NFL regular season schedule's gotten more and more play in the last year or so. Needless to say, the league's no closer to adding a game than they were when the season expanded to 16 games in 1978.
Adding a game raises a smattering of other issues like, cutting the regular season, expanding rosters, creating a development league, higher salaries, yada, yada, yada.Of course, the bottom line is revenue.
Here's a twist on the 17th game addition though: adding spring games, either intra-squad scrimmages like in college football or some kind of exhibition game. That sounds great...until the top draft pick blows his ACL.
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How can they make it a 17 game season?
How could you justify having half the league play 8 home games while the other half plays 9?
Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me......with nothin'.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Have one game per team in a neutral location.. ie, like London last year, which sucked because one team had to lose a home game.
This opens the way to having meaningful games played outside the US without anyone losing out.
Not sure how I feel about that, but I suspect it will be the ultimate reason given if 17 is adopted.
Plus there’d be no more 8-8 season. Winning or losing season, the end.
I go both ways on the 17th game thing...
if you went to Europe, it could be a real bitch to have to go overseas in the middle of the season for a game…but maybe if those games were scheduled around the bye week…
there are 32 teams so that’s 16 games at a neutral site, right?…are there 16 sites that would give the league the crowds they want? It’s great if London gets, say a Dallas/New England game, but what if it draws Detroit/Cincinnati? What other cities would be in the mix? Mexico City? Berlin? you already have the Bills in Toronto, so they’re out…maybe the other Canadian cities would get all protectionist and not support something that might be perceived as a threat to their CFL.
maybe you don’t even have to go outside the U.S. you possibly could get huge crowds in cities that don’t have a team, like San Antonio or Birmingham or Memphis…maybe it’s a way to get live NFL football back into L.A., by playing several games there each season, until you are able to get a team in there.
London game
Last year we had the Dolphins v Giants which was hardly glamorous at the time yet tickets were way over subscribed. For a few years at least I don’t think it would matter who the teams are UK fans will still turn up to watch it.
I do have to admit that both the Dolphins and Giants do have historically large fan bases in the UK.
I’d suspect cities that housed nfl europe/WLAF teams or american bowl games would be solid locations, except Raleigh/Durham perhaps.
But you could also double dip in the primo cities, 2 games in London, Berlin, Mexico, Tokyo
Fill it out with Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Barcelona, Amsterdam.. and then 4 games in LA lol..
And rig it so the Raiders and Rams always play in LA on their expedition games
For how long, though?
You guys are talking about playing an extra game for each team outside the United States for…..ever? That’s gonna get real old real quick. The NFL Europe or World League or whatever failed miserably in every country except Germany where eventually almost every team moved to.
Adding a 17th game for every team to play outside the US is short sighted, is a scheduling nightmare, and is doomed to fail.
Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me......with nothin'.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Which is probably why the brains of the NFL think it's a good idea
If I’ve ever seen a league so full of itself and think they’re so much more awesome then they really are, it’s the NFL.
They really think the quality of the game is why the NFL is so popular. Guess it has absolutely nothing to do with playing virtually every game on one day of the week (one that happens to be on the weekend), nothing to do with a short season which magnifies the importance of every single game, and I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Las Vegas.
If you really look at the league, the level of play is atrocious. There are no really good teams anymore. And while some are foolish to think that parity is actually a good thing, let me remind you that close scores does not equal good games.
Seriously, how many times do we have to see some retard block a guy square in the back on every damn kickoff before someone realizes they aren’t supposed to do it? I’m serious. How long? Because it happens on every damn kickoff.
But, it’s not only that. Officiating is horrible and the salary cap has all but destroyed the possibility to build a team and learn a damn system. Football is complicated and is fun to watch when teams act as a unit. When you have rotating parts every stinking year, you have guys that are constantly re-learning the system. Therefore, that system never grows. It always has to stay at a beginner to moderate level because teams aren’t together long enough to learn to grow the system.
But, I get that I’m ranting way off topic here. Even though this all comes in to play. If the league is making a crap load of money, then obviously the League is doing things right….right? Hell no. So, this is exactly why in the next couple of years the NFL will do something extremely stupid like add a 17th “neutral site” game or expand another league overseas. Why? Because they never make a mistake.
Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me......with nothin'.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I'm 110% against adding a 17th game
Tackle Box already made my best points for me about the appallingly low quality of play. But I’m a reductionist by nature — the way to make the league better is to play less games, and therefore play more games with the best players on the field. We already spend way too long in preseason, and lose way too many marquee players to injuries.
If you want more football, I can think of better ways to get it:
- Mandatory open practices and televised scrimmages – the NFL Network has got nothing better to show during the week.
- Double the spending on injury prevention technology and research, and mandate effective equipment like the concussion-less helmets.
- Let one less team into the playoffs per conference. Week 17 is already a joke, with half the games rendered meaningless by teams resting up for the playoffs. But if only one team per conference could earn a first-week bye, and one fewer spot was available for the scrappy 9-7 type teams, it would bring a lot more drama to the final regular season week.
- Play the Pro Bowl with no pads or helmets. They’re in Hawaii, they’re the best of the best – we don’t want to watch them pretend to kill each other. Let ’em relax and play. (I really have no reason for this, I just think the Pro Bowl is boring.)
"Attaway to stomp 'em. Stomp the piss out of 'em. Stomp 'em when they're down. Kick 'em and stomp 'em. Attaway to go boys. Pound that old Budweiser into you and go get them tomorrow." -- Joe Schultz
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