The NFL has already made contingency plans to push back Super Bowl XLVI as much as two weeks, but the regular season schedule was released Tuesday and commissioner Roger Goodell said he expects it to remain unchanged.
“We’re planning – and you saw that when we released the schedule yesterday – to start the season on time,” Goodell said during a conference call today with 5,500 New York Giants season ticket holders. “We’re planning on playing a full season. And we’re going to negotiate as hard as we can to get that done.
“You obviously have to be prepared if you’re unsuccessful. But I don’t like to focus on that. I like to focus on being successful. There is a lot of risk for everybody involved, most of all you as fans. We know how much you want football. So we have to identify the solutions and get it done. It’s tough for me to project other than we’re going to continue to make the preparations for the season and work as hard as we can to solve those issues in advance, so we can play every game and every down of the season.”
Goodell is getting out and spreading the word, at least from the league’s standpoint. He’s held similar calls with fans from the Browns, Dolphins and Chargers and one is in the mix for the 49ers.
“Not playing football and shutting your business down has a dramatic impact on your business,” Goodell said. “There will be a tremendous amount of lost revenue to the teams. There will be a tremendous amount of lost revenue to the players. A strike or a lockout has significant financial impact on all parties. It is one of the reasons why they are used. People usually get serious and they resolve their differences because the damage is significant.
“I worry not only about the financial impact to all parties but also the damage to our game and what it does in the eyes of our fans if we are unsuccessful. That is why we are looking for solutions and why we want to continue to negotiate to get it resolved before any of that occurs. Make no mistake about it: It will have significant financial impact on the clubs.”
Goodell is saying a lot of the right things but ultimately the conversations that matter will be the ones held at the bargaining table. No one has lost anything at this point but the schedules that came out mean nothing without labor peace.