17 game season for NFL?

[gusmahler]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2866680

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the NFL is investigating adding a 17th regular-season game and playing it outside the United States. The extra game would take the place of one in the preseason, allowing every team to play once abroad without sacrificing a home game.


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Discuss.

[NSchandler]

This would suck hard.

[bottomset]

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This would suck hard.

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[PokerFink]

I'd rather see every team play a preseason game abroad first. If that's not an emormous success, the NFL shoulden't even consider this idea.

[bernie]

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I'd rather see every team play a preseason game abroad first. If that's not an emormous success, the NFL shoulden't even consider this idea.

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I agree. Why waste a reg season game on it?

I also think they should consolidate the divisions within the conference. But there's no money in doing that...

b

[prohornblower]

[Jack of Arcades]

the unbalanced schedule is history's greatest monster. When you have TWO wild cards, there's no excuse for having teams sneak in just because they got to play everyone in the nfc west.

[bernie]

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the unbalanced schedule is history's greatest monster. When you have TWO wild cards, there's no excuse for having teams sneak in just because they got to play everyone in the nfc west.

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Yep. Now they get to play the NFC west plus a last place schedule.

I'd like to see 2 divisions per conference. 4 team divisions suck.

b

[jstnrgrs]

I actually think that the schedule is great the way it is now. Within the division, 14 games are against common opponents, which makes for an almost fair race for the division title. I don't care if some teams have an easier road to the wildcard. If you get a wildcard spot, you should consider yourself lucky. If you really want to make the playoffs, win your division.

As for the idea of adding a 17th game, I don't like it because it would make the schedule more unbalanced (the 17th game would not be against a common opponent for other teams in the division). If they were willing to go to 18 games, then they could make all 18 games be against common opponents (6 division games, 4 iterconference games, and 8 intra conference games (play every team in two other divisions)). But of course, this would mean that they either wouldn't get the international game, or that they would have to have 2 international games per team.

The way they could play 17 game fairly (well not really, but it would be as fair as it is now) would be to expand to 40 teams (8 divisions of 5). Have each team play 8 division games, 5 games against teams from another division in their conference, and 4 games against teams from a division in the other conference (the team from that division that they don't play would be based on the records of the teams from the previous year).

Basically, I think that adding a 17th game is a bad idea.

[VarlosZ]

I'm in favor of upping the regular season to 18 games and sacrificing two preseason games -- maybe they could start a week earlier and only lose one preseason game. I like this for two reasons: more football, and less variance. The playoffs will feature the best teams more often.