LONDON—Die-hard NFL fans from around the globe showed up for a wide-ranging Q&A with commissioner Roger Goodell Saturday afternoon.
He touched on a wide-range of issues, including the possibility of expanding with a franchise here in the United Kingdom at some point, the kind of long-range planning that is possible now for the league with the ink still fresh on a 10-year collective bargaining agreement.
But the first step, Goodell said, is more football here. The Chicago Bears will play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday at Wembley Stadium. The goal is to have two regular-season games here starting in 2012 and the league is looking for ways to strengthen its fan support here.
“Thirty-two has been a great number for us,” Goodell said. “It works from a scheduling standpoint. What we want to do is make sure all of our teams continue to be successful. The greatest thing about the CBA is it’s 10 years so it gives you an opportunity to really plan into the future and that’s a big plus for us and that also may include expansion at some point. When we know we have the stability of understanding the system over that period of time, that’s going to benefit everybody. Who knows? Expansion may be the way we need to do it over here internationally. It might be the best solution for us. So I don’t think anything is off the table. It has not been a major focus for us in the past but now with this labor agreement, it might be.”
Goodell touched on a number of other points and we’ll touch on the highlights:
Is interest growing among NFL teams to play a game in London?
RG: “It starts with who can come over? A lot of teams have leases with their stadiums and their communities and they are not permitted to take a home game away. So you start with who has the potential to come over? The second is, we try to do the best we can to expose our game to our fans. So we want as many teams to come over, we want to see the more popular teams come over but what we’re focusing now because we think our game had advanced far enough that there is enough exposure to the game, is should we focus just a couple of teams as consistently coming back here to build a fan base around those teams? The Bucs are coming back for the second time in three years. The idea is will that allow them to build a fan base quicker? And for us to see how you build that fan base. So, it’s a balancing act. Is it going to advance our cause here?”
Has the lockout affected the game this season?
RG: “We thought the play might be sloppy, offenses would be behind. It’s been exactly the opposite. Play has been outstanding. Offenses are at record numbers. The number of touchdowns are the highest ever if we continue at this pace. The actual game has survived incredibly well. One other area that I was concerned with was first-year coaches because first-year coaches really didn’t have the time to get to their players and spend time with them and implement their systems. But that has also been good. Jim Harbaugh is a great example of that. He implemented a system with very little time and didn’t have much time with Alex Smith and look at them. They’re both doing extraordinarily well and the team is doing extraordinarily well. The game has survived incredibly well. We would like to see a whole cycle of what happens in the offseason because in the collective bargaining agreement we reduced the amount of offseason contacts, which I think is good for player health and safety.”
Is he confident the Vikings will stay in Minnesota?
RG: “Think we’re making great momentum. We’re working very closely with the governor, legislative leaders and obviously the Vikings. (Minnesota) does need a new stadium. We’ll get that done I hope.”
Goodell said he believes there is a strong possibility the proposed stadium in Arden Hills gets approved.
Will the NFL re-examine having kickoffs at the 35-yard line?
RG: “We haven’t come up in my mind with the best solution yet. What we’ve done though is taken that play and reduced the risk of injury. At the same time that takes away, potentially, one of the more exciting plays in the league. Interesting enough, I think our kickoff returns are pretty close to consistent with where they have been in the past. But we do have more touchbacks. We’re roughly 50/50 on touchbacks vs. kickoff returns. It’s higher than we thought, quite frankly. We’d like to see it play out during the season. The competition committee met this last week and they said, ‘Well, it’s still warm. When it gets colder the ball won’t go as far on the kickoffs.’ So, someone like Devin Hester in Chicago is going to get a chance to return more balls when it gets colder. We’ll see. The bottom line is without making any evaluations, we will clearly look at it at the end of the season. We’ll see if it’s something we want to modify further, but it’s also something we’re not going to compromise and that’s player safety.”
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Brad Biggs covers the Bears for the Chicago Tribune