The NFL season currently includes four preseason games, none of which mean anything in terms of a team’s record.
There has been talk for the past few years that the system could be altered within the next year or two. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is pushing for a season that has two preseason games, 18 regular-season games and three playoff games followed by the Super Bowl.
The reactions to this proposed change have been all across the board. The franchise owners, coaches and players think that Goodell is crazy and it is a horrible idea. NFL fans are in love with the idea and would like nothing more than to replace two preseason games with two regular-season games.
The idea of an 18-game regular season has pros as well as cons, but I firmly believe that adopting an 18-game regular season in the NFL is not a good idea.
Sure, eliminating two preseason games is great for the fans, as Roger Goodell put it at the “State of the League” press conference in 2011.
“We started this with the fans,” Goodell said in an article on NBCSports.com. “The fans have clearly stated that they don’t like the preseason. We have a 20-game format, 16 regular season games and four preseason games, and the fans have repeatedly said the preseason games don’t meet NFL standards. And that is the basis on which we started this 18-game concept, taking two low-quality preseason games and turning them into two high-quality regular season games.”
In addition to appeasing the fans, the NFL would be able to increase their revenue as well.
Despite the avid support for the 18-game season on the part of the fans and Commissioner Goodell, the franchise owners, coaches and players are adamantly opposed to the idea.
People fail to realize that changing two preseason games to two regular season games is not as easy as saying “these two games are going to count as regular season games instead of preseason games.” It seems as though this would be an easy change to make, but it is anything but easy. A two game increase is equivalent to a 12.5 percent increase in playing time for most starters, a significant amount.
If you change the regular season from 16 regular-season games to 18 regular-season games, the entire NFL as we know it will need a complete overhaul.
Players would demand extra compensation for the addition of two extra games. These figures could really begin to add up.
For example, if a player makes $16 million under the current system, he would expect to make $18 million if the season were to be extended to 18 games. League-wide, players would be receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in salary increases as a result of the increases in regular season games played.
An increase in salary is just one of the many modifications that would be forced by this change. Changes would also have to be made in terms of fewer OTA’s (organized team activities), the dates for voluntary offseason workouts would have to be pushed back, there would need to be a change in injury reserve rules, among countless other changes as well.
In addition to all the necessary modifications caused by an 18-game season, lengthening the schedule would be counterintuitive to all the changes that have already been made in an effort to preserve player safety. There is already much concern about all the serious injuries that happen during a season. Adding two regular season games will only cause this problem to escalate, not perpetuate.
It is easy to see that increasing the regular season to 18 games would not only force the NFL to completely change the way that it currently operates, but would also undermine all the work the NFL has done to address its biggest concerns: the quantity and severity of injuries currently seen in the NFL. To put it simply, an 18-game season is more work than it is actually worth.
Christopher Miller is a freshman studying broadcast journalism and sports management and a columnist for The Post. Would an 18-game season be good for the NFL? Email Christopher at cm001111@ohiou.edu.
