NFL wants to expand to 18 game regular season

It seems that the NFL is hell bent on expanding the regular season to 18 games. This is likely to due to a couple of factors. The first as a compromise tool with their players union to add games and keep players salaries where they are, or slightly higher, and to force all 32 NFL teams to have a game held outside of the United States, or at some other venue to help grow the league world wide. There are a few potential problems with getting rid of pre-season games in favor of regular season contests, but on the whole this seems like a pretty solid plan.

Currently the NFL plays four pre-season games each year, and over the past few years several players have suffered season ending injuries during these games. On top of that these games are for the most part poorly attended and have poor TV ratings. Adding a few regular season games to the mix would take away the risk of injury for games that mean nothing, and add big profit to the league.

The problem of course is how would teams make roster decisions? The answer for that seems to be the formation (or a partnership with the United Football League) of a Developmental League. They could structure this league much the way the old NFL Europe was where each NFL team was allowed to assign players to the league. This would seem to make a lot of sense as he NFL would finally have a minor league system set up that would be on par with that of Major League Baseball.

Of course they still we will have to convince the player’s union that this is a good idea, and that it should be included in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Related Links:

•The Business of the NFL
•MTR Football.com