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Yep. No way the Jags will take away a home game that should see a sellout or close to it. Packers fans travel very well and you have a number of transplants down south.
I doubt we'll see that happen. Our football is not played all that much outside of the US and Canada. It would be nice, but not something we'll see anytime soon.
An NFL team in London would be a disaster from a logistical standpoint and something I hope we never see happen.
100% correct.
The longest trip in the NFL is Miami to Seattle, which I believe is about 6 and a half hours. The closest opponent for London would be New England, which is about 7 hours. So you're talking about the equilvant of a cross-country trip almost every week. Home game in London, then off to Boston, back to London, then off to Chicago. So what are they going to do when the team plays back to back road games? No one is going to want to fly cross country to practice for 3 days only to have to fly back to the states. Are they going to set up practice camp somewhere, like Kansas, or New Hampshire?
That travel is going to be hell, and it's going to be even worse when the team eventually has to go to Seattle, San Diego, LA, etc. Those players are going to eventually run into fatigue, which I can see costing some players their careers.
Then the league is going to have to figure out how to schedule the rest of the league when it's their turn to travel to London and attempt to keep everybody happy. That's not going to happen by the way.
Like I said earlier, no one is going to want to put up with this. If the NFL really wants to expand internationally, put a team in Toronto and call it a day. Otherwise don't fix what is not broken.
Just to be clear, I don't think this is a good move by the NFL. I would consider going if the Packers were playing there simply because I like to travel.
The ONLY way I can see a London team work is if they put 4 or 5 other teams in Europe (Maybe Paris, Barcelona, Dublin & Frankfurt and then put a team in Italy/Austria/Switzerland/Czech Republic/Poland??) have a strictly "Europe" division, swap around the schedule so you only play 2 road games & 2 home games outside of the division, and you play the remainder in the division. So the 5 or 6 European teams only travel to the states twice and the teams from the states only travel to Europe twice. With the 2 home & 2 road set up it's easier to leave the state teams in Europe back to back weeks (I.e the Giants play 1 week in London than the next week in Dublin). I don't see them rearranging the schedule or see them adding any more than 2 franchises in Europe, so this looks like an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.
most logical plan I've heard floated was that the season would expand to 17 games with every team playing 1 game in London, 8 home games and 8 away games...easy peasy...more money for everyone
most logical plan I've heard floated was that the season would expand to 17 games with every team playing 1 game in London, 8 home games and 8 away games...easy peasy...more money for everyone
The player's union would fight it, as they would want a cut of the extra money from that additional game. They would want to rework the salary cap and contract structures in a situation like that. They already are getting screwed financially, IMO (unless you are a starting quarterback).
Just to be clear, I don't think this is a good move by the NFL. I would consider going if the Packers were playing there simply because I like to travel.
I agree, I don't like it either. The NFL is becoming ruined because of Goodell.
It's better than having a team waste a home game in London. Don't care for the idea but the travel angle many are trying to sell is futile. It's not like the players would be on cramped planes. They'd be traveling in luxury. I won't be shedding to tears for their "grueling" travel schedule.
It's better than having a team waste a home game in London. Don't care for the idea but the travel angle many are trying to sell is futile. It's not like the players would be on cramped planes. They'd be traveling in luxury. I won't be shedding to tears for their "grueling" travel schedule.
Yes.
The whole 'OMG, long flights!' silliness is just that -- silly.
The Honolulu Islanders were a Pacific Coast League AAA team for 27 years. Their nearest rivals were in California. After the NHL, the world's most prominent professional hockey league is the KHL, with teams spread from central Europe to eastern China and two teams in Russia that are even further east than that (the league spans 10 time zones). And baseball and hockey schedules are a lot more compressed than football. And as for football, go back and look at any team's NKL schedule from the 1950s - teams always played at Los Angeles and at San Francisco in consecutive weeks. They were spending the week in California in the interim. NHL and NBA teams currently will make road-trips where they play 3 or 4 games in the South or the West or the Northeast over the span of 4 to 6 days - they're living on the road during those stretches.
Here's what the NFL would do with London scheduling. They would probably give the team two or three Thursday night games each year, which would always be on the road and would always follow another road game - so the team would fly to the states, play a Sunday game, stay stateside for three days, play a Thursday game, and fly back across the pond. Their bye week would always follow an away game. Other than those instances, they would never play back-to-back road games. And there are other things they can do to mitigate the travel.
And no one's career is going to be shortened by making longer flights. The London team would still rack up fewer miles in the air than any team in any of the other major sports leagues. I couldn't care less either way if they do it, but people carping about the travel are just casting about for excuses against something they don't like. It's not a real problem of any substantial sort.
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