For quite some time now, there has been an increase in speculation about the NFL expanding to countries outside of the United States. For the past few years, one regular season game has been played in England. The idea behind this is that by exposing Europeans to the NFL, the league might eventually be able to actually station teams in England (or other countries in Europe) permanently. The NFL has become the most popular sport in the United States, and like any good businessmen would do, the league executives are trying to increase their profits even more by globalizing the game. Some might say that this is a good idea, but I am absolutely not one of those people.
The National Football League is an entity that began in the United States, and has grown from a relatively unknown American sport, to the number one sport in the country. It is something that is played almost exclusively in the United States. Out of all the major professional sports in this country, football is far and away the "most American." Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL are all the pre-eminent leagues in their respective sports worldwide, but there are numerous other countries that have prefessional baseball, hockey, and basketball leagues. Out of all major American professional sports, there is only one that is not played in the Olympics or any other international competitions. That sport, of course, is football. The reason behind this is simple. People outside of the United States simply do not care for football anywhere close to as much as Americans do.
The Super Bowl, the crowning moment of each NFL season, is always one of the most watched sporting events throughout the world. However, this is not nearly enough reason to think that the game should be played outside the country. The Super Bowl happens once each year, and there are millions of people watching the game that see it more as a show and not an actual football game.
The same can be said about the once-a-year NFL regular season game in England. It happens once each year. People go to the game because of its uniqueness. The game is played, people show up to watch, and then resume their daily lives without a need for seeing another NFL game the next Sunday. In Europe, American football is very far down on the list of most popular sports. Soccer is, of course, the most popular sport in most European countries, but hockey and basketball are popular throughout the continent, and even sports like rugby and cricket are probably more popular in most parts of Europe than American football is.
Popularity however, is only part of the reason that the NFL is not ready to expand outside of the United States. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is simply the issue of practicality. Having one team play all of its home games in Europe would be impractical. Teams, fans, players, TV and radio networks, as well as a whole lot of other people complain when a team from the west coast has to travel across the country and play an early game on the east coast. If the Seattle Seahawks have to fly across the country to play the Giants in a 1:00 PM game, it is the equivalent of playing a game at 10:00 AM in Seattle. While I would like to think that this three hour difference is not that big of a deal, statistics show that west coast teams playing 1:00 games do not fair nearly as well as west coast teams flying across the country and playing at a later time.
So now, take those three hours that it might take for the Seahawks to fly to New Jersey, and add another eight hours that it would take to get across the Atlantic Ocean and somewhere in Europe. The difference would be tremendous. If a team were moved to Europe, it would play eight home games in its new home stadium. That is eight different teams that would have to fly halfway across the world, and I have a feeling that would make eight different organizations somewhat unhappy. Even worse, the team that actually played in Europe would have to travel halfway across the world eight times. Eight hour flights are no piece of cake, and to make a team take such flights eight times each season would be, at least in my eyes, both unfair and unreasonable.
So that takes care of why moving an NFL team to Europe wouldn't make sense as far as the fans and the organizations go. Next would be the most important part of this whole equation, the players. Just about every player in the NFL has been born and raised in the United States. The only real exceptions are guys like Troy Polamalu and Sione Pouha (as well as some others) who were born on island nations in and around Hawaii. Yet, even these guys were at least exposed to American culture when they were young, and attended college in the United States as well. The NFL is made up almost exclusively of American-born and American-bred players. Moving a team across the Atlantic Ocean would likely be an enormous culture shock for most of the players on the newly re-located team. Whether it be learning a new language, learning new customs, using new currency, or even simple things like learning customary routines that are unique to Europe, the move would be a huge change for the players of the home team. The long flight would also undoubtedly play a role in how easily the European team could attract free agents. I'm sure there are some guys in the league that might like to live in Europe, but I would guess that the majority of the players wouldn't even consider going across the Atlantic to play. Add to that the fact that whatever team ended up moving would probably lose about 99.9% of its season ticket holders, and this all just does not add up to a success story. If the team struggled early on, it would most likely have a hard time selling tickets consistently, and just the general isolation of the team from the rest of the league (other players, American media, American fans, families) makes this seem to me like an impossibility.
No matter what anybody might like to think, football is an American game. At this point, it is solely an American game. Maybe one game in Europe each year will allow the game to grow and eventually moving a team could be a possibility, but if I were in charge, the chances of that would be slim, and the chances of it happening in the near future would be none. Our other major professional sports have a much larger following outside of the United States, so if we were to see any of our leagues expand to countries outside North America, it should be the NBA or NHL first.
Many times, the downfall of the most powerful entities is their endless thirst for more power. Expansion and growth are good, but there needs to be some common sense involved as well. The NFL is thriving right now. So my message to the league is this: don't get too greedy, because the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: It seems like every time we get good news, we get bad news as well. Stephen Drew finally came back and got a hit after missing almost an entire calendar year, but now it looks like Daniel Hudson will miss the remainder of the season. The long-awaited debut of Trevor Bauer is in progress right now, and he is pretty much as advertised. Good stuff, but he throws a lot of pitches and walks a lot of guys. It's only 2-0 in the fifth inning though, so I think for a major league debut he has done a fine job. Now if we could only score some runs...
Daily Giants Update: Once again, no news is good news for the defending champs.
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