The London Situaion

The Miami Dolphins "hosted" the New York Jets in London on Sunday. Two more games will be played over there this season. Each of these London games are seen by most as a step in the process of the NFL placing a team over there on a full time basis. Both the games and the desire for a London team are a mistake. It's the sort of mistake that will prompt historians and critics of the league to say fifty years from now that the collapse of the NFL started there.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell routinely bellows that everything that he does is for the fans. He wants to make the game better for the fans. He hasn't come close to that mark for a while but that's his stated goal. The NFL isn't being fan-friendly when they remove a game from the eight-game home schedule from as many as three teams each year. That's what happens when they toss games over to London. Some fans struggle all year to scrape up the money for season tickets and they have one of their games taken from them. That's not for the fans. That's for the NFL. The league sees other countries as untapped markets but why leap to the countries that are separated by a large body of water. I see it as the NFL being more interested in the fans that they could have rather than the fans that they already have. If that's how big business works it's no wonder that I'm not part of it. I just see this quest for new fans as taking the support of their current fans for granted. Besides, there's a couple of countries that border the United States with cities that might want and support an NFL team. Maybe Goodell and his yes-men believe that they already have Canada and Mexico because they are so close. Who knows? My feeling has always been that the NFL should concentrate on the 32 teams that they do have and the cities that host them. The best thing for league-wide success now and in the future is stability and consistency. Nobody wins when teams move and a professional football league larger than 32 teams will become too top-heavy. Even with 32 teams barely half can field a franchise-carrying quarterback. Any more teams and the talent, especially at quarterback, becomes diluted. The differences between the few at the top and the many at the bottom will only increase as the games lean more and more on the talents of the quarterback.

Goodell has screwed up just about everything that he's touched for more than a year. He, in particular, and the league, in general, should concern themselves with nothing else but getting 345 Park Avenue in order. No London teams. No Los Angeles teams. No expansion or team movement until the NFL shows that they can handle things as they currently are. Even then I don't think that they should expand to London or anywhere else beyond the borders of the United States. This isn't about patriotism or not wanting to share the NFL with other countries. It's about "how much is enough?" The NFL seems to lose sight of the fact that they gain fans every single day through births, marriages, fantasy leagues, and chance meetings. They don't need to put a team in London or Helsinki to expand the brand. Placing teams overseas will create logistical nightmares and disgruntled football players. Technology has made the world a smaller place. It's brought the NFL to fans around the world. Technology has not made the physical world any smaller. How many decent football games have been played in London? Not many. There's just not enough time in a week for a team to prepare for a game in London and get to that game. Would the London team actually work out of a stateside facility and fly to their home games in London? How stupid would that be? Just the thought of it is ridiculous. The only reason that the NFL is even considering it is money. It's certainly not for the fans. Some have speculated that the fall of the NFL will come from concerns over the violence of the game. I doubt that. I think that the fall of the league, if it comes, will come from reaching too far, trying to grab too much, getting more greedy than they already are.