A proposal for a 17th game

The NFL is considering plans to expand the regular season. There are a variety of reasons for this: dissatisfaction with preseason games by virtually everyone (as my colleague Matt Bowen pointed out, OTAs have teams in better shape, making four preseason games redundant); the league’s desire to give more meaningful games to its broadcast rights partners and its own network; a need to keep increasing revenue in tough economic times; and a hope to hold on to the nation’s sports consciousness, if that’s possible. The preseason has hung on as long as it has because owners don’t share their preseason revenues, and the profits from these games go straight into their pockets. Even travel costs are cut, with teams playing bus games and train games rather than getting on planes.

Reasons the for the Season

APIf the NHL could do it at Wrigley, why not the NFL?

So if the NFL is bound and determined to expand the season, despite complaints about the potential for injuries, product dilution or extra pay for players, the league should consider adding one game to the season and maintaining one bye week, making for an 18-week regular season. The league has done this before, actually scheduling two byes in 1993 before scrapping the idea one year later and going back to a 17-week season with one bye. But the one additional game should be a neutral-site game with a potential impact not unlike the NHL is hoping to achieve with its Mid-Winter Classic outdoor games. Each owner would get to keep their same share of the revenue from the regular season, and they would get to share the gate for a newly created regular-season game that could be used to export the game abroad or help create new fans in areas that don’t regularly get NFL games.

Neutral, Not Insignificant Turf

One of the happiest memories of my youth and one that is now just a distant memory was watching preseason games in strange barnstorming-ish places. While they were not significant games, they brought the NFL to places and people who didn’t usually get to see NFL games, and in some small, perhaps immeasurable way, grew the sport. It’s also interesting to note that the modern NFL was energized by a 67-day barnstorming tour in 1925 by the Chicago Bears, featuring Red Grange, who had completed his college eligibility just one week earlier.

So while the neutral-site game I’m proposing won’t feature the Galloping Ghost, each should be an event. For fairness’ sake, it should be a non-divisional game. It should also occupy a time slot that separates it from other NFL games, whether as a Monday night or second Monday night game or the Sunday evening national game so it would get a national viewership. It needs to be a national event, so there should be at most two of these in any week, but ideally there should only be one neutral-site game in a week.

So what precisely am I talking about (and I write this from Europe, where I’m teaching a class that involves stadium infrastructure)? I’m talking about regular-season neutral-site games in tremendous and historic foreign venues like London’s Wembley Stadium or the Olympic stadiums in Rome, Bacelona or Berlin, or the Bird’s Nest in Beijing to help grow the sport internationally by exporting meaningful games to significant venues in leading world cities. The NFL has always struggled to take the sport global, using meaningless preseason games to entice disinterested and uninformed customers or marketing a minor-league version without much success to casually interested local customers. But two regular-season games in London have been successful. And this neutral-site game allows the NFL to institutionalize important foreign games.

APThe "Big House"

But I’m also talking about Detroit playing in the University of Michigan’s Big House, Dallas playing Houston in Memorial Stadium in Austin or San Antonio, or the Rams returning to the L.A. Coliseum for a game. Somehow, while not exactly neutral-site games, the Giants in the new Yankee Stadium, the Bears back in Wrigley or the Pats in Fenway jump out as one-time events, too.

Dual Goals: Viewership and Buzz

Yes, this is stunt scheduling, as obvious as a throwback week, and the league has much at risk, including the health of its players. But if the league must add a game, it should be a great, important game that attracts attention, grows the revenue pie and gets people watching, not just another home game and road game. The hardest thing for the NFL to do is actually get new people to watch or come out, and hopefully this kind of neutral game will actually increase viewership and buzz around the league and its regular season. The reason it is hard is because the NFL has a lot of people already watching, but new fans are priceless. There is a ready-made and massive audience for regular-season games. But loyal hometown fans in recent years have had their dollars stretched so much that “George Washington is screaming in pain.” So additional games should be aimed at a dual goal of creating new fans and new sources of revenue.
 

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