NFL commissioner Roger Goodell rules out expansion of professional football league beyond 32 teams – NFL News
Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the American professional football league, National Football League (NFL), has ruled out the possibility of expansion into the number of its franchises.
He said that his comments made in ‘Costas Live’ programme on the NBC Sports Network earlier in this month (February) were mistaken for any plans from the league office towards adding more teams to its current strength of 32 outfits.
The commissioner said that it was a speculative question, which he hypothetically answered, and it later became a story of the day that the NFL was indeed planning to expand its network by bringing in a couple of more teams.
"When I was asked by Bob Costas recently (about expansion), he said, 'You just go to 33 teams.' I said, 'I don't think you would ever expand by one team, you'd expand by two teams.' But it was very clear that expansion's not something we've considered,"
Goodell said.
He added:
"It is something that we potentially could do down the road, having the kind of stability that we have, but we like our structure right now. We like the 32 teams. We think the scheduling is in a good place, we want to keep our teams where they are."
Goodell said that his office was focused on other matters such as preventing relocation of certain teams due to stadium and other problems.
He mentioned the St. Louis Rams and Minnesota Vikings are amongst the teams who are currently dealing with their respective stadium situations and the NFL will be looking to help them avoid relocation to any other city, as had been happening in the past.
The league’s boss said that they were trying to help those teams in building of purposeful stadiums or find any other possible solution that keeps these teams intact in the local communities and their fans support stays at current level.
The NFL works as a representative body of 32 teams of the American professional teams installed at various cities including the two, New York Giants and New York Jets, in the New York city and the commissioner said that they were happy with the current setup.
He at the same time said that they would be looking to increase their international exposure by expanding their regular series in the United Kingdom and Canada, while at home they will try to find a solution to the issue of rehabilitation of an organisation
in the city of Los Angeles.
The American professional football games have been taking place at the Wembley Stadium in London, UK, regularly every year. Despite that the game has been unable to make an impact on the local communities who have historically been driven to the games of
soccer, rugby and cricket.
The commissioner expects the increase in number of games will change the situation.
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