NFL's Regular Season to expand to 18 games
Take two games from the pre-season and put them in the regular season - shouldn’t cause a lot of trouble, right? It’s never as straight forward as that and the proposal to expand the regular season has come under a bit of scrutiny, since the idea was initially
brought to the fore.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell insists that the 18-game season is what the fans want. Very few would know which fans the commissioner has been talking to?
18 games reduce the intensity of the NFL. The fact remains that the regular season has more viewers and attendance than the pre-season and that’s all that matters. Depending on where you stand, NFL stands for various objectives. For the players, it’s about
performing, for the fans it’s the contest and the entertainment and for the owners, it’s about the revenue.
Colts President Bill Polian came out earlier this week and said that the expansion was virtually a done deal on Monday. The NFL and the Players Union didn’t meet until Tuesday. That perhaps is an indication that the league had already made up its mind going
into the meeting with the players association. Many would wonder if the NFLPA even got a chance to voice its concerns.
But why should the NFLPA even be concerned. The number of total games a season would not change. With more excitement that makes up the regular season, more people watch the games and more money is made all around, keeping the same number of overall games.
So why is the players’ association concerned?
For once, rookies don’t get much of an opportunity to strut their stuff in just two pre-season games. Fee agents and late draft picks would have a very tough time breaking into the NFL. Any decisions made in a hurry could come back to bite the team but that’s
something that the coaches, managers and owners are mulling, not the players association.
One of the concerns the players association would be carrying would have to be pay checks. Would two more regular season games mean two more pay check for the players? That’s what the player association wants but the league says no. The league says that
the salary structure would remain the same as it is. The added revenue from the two more games would be going into overall league revenues which will be used to calculate the salary cap. A higher salary cap would automatically increase pays so the players
would be making more but not how the players associations would have wanted.
That must have been one of the issues the league and the association would have discussed but certainly not the only one. The pay is an issue that the owners are pretty stingy about but that at least can be resolved between the two sides. What the league
can’t make right is the injury concerns.
Everything is still the same - 20 games, 2 preseason and 18 regular seasons - but the intensity of the regular season just can’t be compared to the pre-season. Teams try out the new flock in the pre-season and limit their starters to just a handy workout
to prepare for the regular season. They make sure not to lose anyone before the season even starts.
The stress on a starter of 18 regular season games wouldn’t be easy to deal with. After the playoffs, many players and fans might already be out of it. That is not something the fans want to see. Players get time to recover from the strain of the pre-season
and rest before the real thing starts.
Even if the pays were increased, the players might end up making less. The new schedule would increase the risk of serious injuries. The NFL would start seeing earlier retirements. They say football is not a contact sport, it’s a collision sport. Well there
are only so many collisions the human body can deal with in rapid succession.
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