Image via Wikipedia I was watching Jim Rome Is Burning today and listened to him talk about the impending lockout in the NFL. Rome was talking about how Antonio Cromartie might be the voice of reason among all involved in the negotiation which isn’t what I’m going to talk about. During that burn I heard about how the players won’t play an 18 game schedule and that the commissioner, Roger Goodell said that the owners and fans all want to see it happen. Really… the fans want a longer season?I don’t know who Commissioner Goodell is talking to, but I haven’t heard any fans talking about how great a longer season would be. Personally, I think it is a terrible idea. By extending the season by an additional 2 games what is going to happen? The players are going to be exposed to more injuries, teams that are doing poorly will continue to struggle to fill seats and the fans of that team will be punished by blackouts. More late season games will be reduced to the equivalent of preseason games with elite players being benched for rest before the playoffs. I don’t see how any of this helps the league grow its fan base or its product.
The players are afraid of be subjected to more injuries during a longer regular season and well they should be. It seems like every day we are finding out more and more about the long term effects of playing in the NFL. Adding 2 games to the season is only going to increase the number of injuries suffered in a season. This has the possibility of shortening careers drastically, plus ruin the quality of life of some of these athletes after their careers. Most of which don’t make the ridiculous money that the top players do, but sacrifice just as much. The fans are worried about these injuries as well. Who wants to pay to go see a team of backups? I don’t. I don’t even want to pay the insane prices for the starters. More injuries will equal a lesser product and nobody wants that.
As the rules are now, if a stadium doesn’t sell out then the game will be blocked out in the city in which it is played. I already hate this rule and now it will be an even bigger problem. Fans of lousy teams won’t pay to see them at the stadium so no one will be able to see that team in that city outside of the stadium. How is that supposed to grow a fan base? I understand that the owners want full stadiums, but in order to fill those stadiums you need a good product to put on the field and not every team is good every year. Why punish the fans for the management’s inability to put together a respectable team? It makes no sense and the problem will only get worse with a longer season.
Every year for the last few games of the season the question of resting players is always brought up. The teams that run away with their divisions have the opportunity to sit players for games that have no meaning for them and they have earned the right to do so even though I believe it goes against the basic principles of all sports. There will be instances where teams will clinch divisions and playoff spots with 4 or more games to play. What will happen then? That teams remaining games will look like preseason games because the starters will only play for a half. Why risk hurting your star players in games that don’t mean anything to your club? The price of a ticket will be the same and once again the fan gets cheated out of a quality product.
I think that the commissioner has his facts a little twisted. The fans don’t want and aren’t calling for a longer season. We want a better product in the preseason along with cheaper tickets for the preseason. Why should I have to pay a regular season price to watch a game that is full of third stringers and guys who won’t even be on the team during the regular season? If you want to eliminate a few preseason games then so be it but we want a great product and a longer season doesn’t promise that. Now with that said, we will watch a longer season even if we don’t want it because we love football.
Don’t use the fans as a bargaining chip to manipulate the situation. This is about money and specifically who gets more of it. We pay the outrageous ticket prices. We pay the overly inflated prices for our favorite player’s jersey. We pay for the Sunday NFL Ticket so that we can watch our favorite teams all year round. If this had anything to do with the fans then there wouldn’t be any chance of a lockout, blackouts wouldn’t exist and ticket prices would be affordable for people like me. The fans want football, once you figure out the money issues let us know so that we can get back to what we want.
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