NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, says expansion in regular season to 18 games a possibility –NFL News
A couple of days after National Football League (NFL) commissioner, Roger Goodell, denied weighing expansion of the league to more than 32 teams, possibly 34, the league’s boss has said that the possibility of an extension into the regular season to 18 games
from its current 16 games would be a part of their discussion around different issues in their offseason meetings.
He, at the same time, said that they would prefer the possibility of an increase in the number of regular season games coming through the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), dually involving the players in the final decision on it.
He said:
"Well I appreciate the enthusiasm for it and I hear it from the fans consistently.”
He added:
“People want more football. I think they want less preseason and more regular season and that's the concept we are talking about here. We wouldn't add an extra two games without reducing the preseason, and we are not going to do it without the players’
support, so we did that in the collective bargaining agreement instead of having the unilateral right, which we had.”
While expressing his optimism on accomplishment of the game-expansion plan, he said that it could take at least two to three years to happen.
The American professional football league comprises a number of parts in a season, including the preseason, regular season and then postseason.
Currently, the regular season is stretched over 16 games, commencing from September 01, every year, and ending in the first week of January over next year.
If the expansion happens, the regular season will start atleast two weeks earlier in the month of August, affecting the number of games in the preseason, for which the league said it wants to have a feedback from all the stakeholders, and particularly consent
from its players.
The game-expansion plans coincide with reports that the NFL was looking into the possibilities of an increase in the number of its franchises, from current 32 to possibly 34.
Goodell, in one of his remarks, last week denied that being on the agenda of the league in the near future at least, saying that the current number of 32 teams was more workable.
The reports around the possibility of adding a couple of more teams to the NFL have emerged in the face of commissioner’s remarks about reinstalling a team in the city of Los Angeles, as it had been done in case of the St. Louis Rams.
While denying that being possible in the near future, Goodell said that the league office was focused on helping a number of teams in finding solution to their stadiums’ problem to prevent their relocation to other cities.
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