Wouldn't they have to change it to the IFL then?

I would think the team name would be the Tories.

Beaver1224: I would think the team name would be the Tories.

The London Sissienannies

So an 11 hour flight for teams on the West Coast? How about no.

Put a team in Japan and have monday night football start at 2AM. That's earlier than world series games start.

Kraft has a point - you can't grow the fan base any bigger than it already is. People who don't watch the NFL either actively dislike football, or don't like sports in general.

downstairs: So an 11 hour flight for teams on the West Coast? How about no.

How about they play in the AFC or NFC East then?

Babwa Wawa: downstairs: So an 11 hour flight for teams on the West Coast? How about no.

How about they play in the AFC or NFC East then?

No idea what you're saying here? You're knocking a west coast team for being on the west coast? What is this... 1945?

downstairs: No idea what you're saying here? You're knocking a west coast team for being on the west coast? What is this... 1945?

No, I'm saying that if they end up with a team in Europe, they're likely to be in one of the eastern divisions, so they end up playing west coast teams once or twice a year. Flight from NY to London is 7 hours, from Atlanta to London is 8 or so. It's not the end of the world, and it's not like they'll have to connect in Frankfurt.

I don't think anybody is seriously thinking about moving STL to London permanently, but even if they did, it's not like they couldn't shift some teams around between divisions to accommodate a move.

When they move to England they must be renamed from Patriots to Traitors.

I vote for doing it through expansion, since they want teams in a few other places anyway.....

4 team expansion.... 36 teams, back to 6 divisions:

NFC East: NY Giants, Philly, Washington, Dallas, Toronto*, London*
NFC Central: Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota, Detroit, Tampa Bay, Carolina
NFC West: Seattle, San Fran, St. Louis, Arizona, New Orleans, Atlanta

AFC East: NY Jets, Buffalo, Miami, New England, Jacksonville,
AFC Central: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Tennessee
AFC West: San Diego, Denver, KC, Oakland, Los Angeles*, Mexico City or Pacific Rim*

Playoffs are 3 division winners and 4 wild cards in each conference.... only #1 seed gets a bye, so, 3 wild card games per conference the first weekend. Since #1 seed will always be the best team in the conference no matter what, they can seed the teams in the first and second rounds based SOLELY by record (so, division championship gets you a playoff game, but, not necessarily at home). Two new wild card round games would probably get gobbled up by NFL Network.

New schedule structure: Play each team in division twice (10 games), Play a specific division out of conference each season (6 games), play the teams that finished at the same place as you last year in the other inter-conference divisions (2 games). NFL gets its 18 game season (in exchange for 240 new roster spots).

Oops, need to fix my AFC:

AFC East: NY Jets, Buffalo, Miami, New England, Jacksonville, Indianapolis
AFC Central: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston, Tennessee
AFC West: San Diego, Denver, KC, Oakland, Los Angeles*, Mexico City or Pacific Rim*

IT'S HAPPENING

/hot

Something about a jaguar wearing a monocle makes me laugh and laugh.

Why does the NFL keep insisting this?

Not only is this an incredibly stupid idea, but it would be a logistical nightmare to bring a whole team across the Atlantic every week.

Mrtraveler01: Why does the NFL keep insisting this?

Not only is this an incredibly stupid idea, but it would be a logistical nightmare to bring a whole team across the Atlantic every week.

Somehow, the WLAF did it for two seasons with 3 European teams in a league that didn't make nearly as much money as the NFL. And the NFL didn't bail because of the travel as much as the U.S. markets didn't react as well as they'd liked.

The logistics are not that hard.

London Red Coats. The Pats/Coats matchups would rock.

The time difference for playing west coast teams would suck, though. That is a hell of a slog no matter how you fly it.

/ Flies it a lot.

Babwa Wawa: downstairs: No idea what you're saying here? You're knocking a west coast team for being on the west coast? What is this... 1945?

No, I'm saying that if they end up with a team in Europe, they're likely to be in one of the eastern divisions, so they end up playing west coast teams once or twice a year. Flight from NY to London is 7 hours, from Atlanta to London is 8 or so. It's not the end of the world, and it's not like they'll have to connect in Frankfurt.

I don't think anybody is seriously thinking about moving STL to London permanently, but even if they did, it's not like they couldn't shift some teams around between divisions to accommodate a move.

And the year London would play the NFC west would mean they travel to the west coast 2 weeks and 2 teams fly to london. The AFC West would be almost as bad. Mix in Monday night and Thursday games and that team will have an impossible time keeping players.

Stupid idea. They're too into their grass-diving and rugby. Not enough of a market left for football. Besides they couldn't wrap their heads around scoring more 1 point at a time.

I can see a number of players with criminal records having problems getting visas for Europe or the Pacific Rim.

Definitely have to do a two-week stint in the US, like F1 did.

What a stupid idea. You can get an audience for a game in London once a year as a treat for the American ex-pats and a freak show for the locals. As a regular event that attracts a dedicated local fan base? Not a hope in hell. There's no tradition of watching the game, or caring about the Colleges that feed the game, let alone playing the game. And with this misplaced, out-of-context, rootless game they're going to go up against soccer, the quintessentially traditional and local game? Do they have any idea how many established professional soccer teams there are in London?

Look, NFL: You already demonstrated how clueless you are about local sensibilities by creating NFL Europe teams with names like the London Monarchs and the Scottish Claymores, and then compounding that by imagining that London/Edinburgh could be marketed as a local rivalry. This latest proposal just makes you sound even more like the ugly Americans abroad.

laid back w/bud light: Stupid idea. They're too into their grass-diving and rugby. Not enough of a market left for football. Besides they couldn't wrap their heads around scoring more 1 point at a time.

Said by someone who obviously has no idea how Rugby is scored.

Hey Bob, just keep cutting the checks and praying Belichick doesn't go senile on you anytime soon. Just because you think you're "tapping out" here doesn't mean England is the place to go.

iron_city_ap: And the year London would play the NFC west would mean they travel to the west coast 2 weeks and 2 teams fly to london. The AFC West would be almost as bad. Mix in Monday night and Thursday games and that team will have an impossible time keeping players.

That's one year - or they could coordinate the move. They could do back to back weeks in London, back to back weeks traveling.

Or not. London is not freaking Bangalore, you know. Flight time from LA is 10 hours. It's not that bad on a chartered flight with nice seats.

czetie: What a stupid idea. You can get an audience for a game in London once a year as a treat for the American ex-pats and a freak show for the locals. As a regular event that attracts a dedicated local fan base? Not a hope in hell. There's no tradition of watching the game, or caring about the Colleges that feed the game, let alone playing the game. And with this misplaced, out-of-context, rootless game they're going to go up against soccer, the quintessentially traditional and local game? Do they have any idea how many established professional soccer teams there are in London?

What do you propose to continue growing the game then? More franchises in the US?

I'll grant you that they should be in Canada and Mexico as well, but if you package that up with a single team in London, it's entirely workable.

Historically, you would think it would be the London Loyalists. Even has a bit of alliteration to it. Or the London Lions...and don't tell me that's already taken, as like 20 per cent of the teams in the CFL have been named Roughriders at one point or another.

Also, can't they have the Browns instead?

Worked great last time.

Babwa Wawa: Kraft has a point - you can't grow the fan base any bigger than it already is. People who don't watch the NFL either actively dislike football, or don't like sports in general.

Why does the fan base need to grow any bigger than it already is? What's wrong with staying the current size?

Babwa Wawa: How about they play in the AFC or NFC East then?

You do realize that teams play games outside their own division, right? And even the travel for the games within its own division is going to worse than cross-country trips are already, which people already complain about. Do you really think athletes can perform at peak physical levels with five hours of jet lag every other week?

Babwa Wawa: I'll grant you that they should be in Canada and Mexico as well, but if you package that up with a single team in London, it's entirely workable.

The problem being that most people in the UK who like American Football already have a team they like. Bringing in something new to a place with a middling interest doesn't strike me as smart.

"I think I said that the last time we were over here in 2009 and before this next decade is out, I hope we have a team here."

I believe that this league should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing an NFL team in London and returning it safely to play the Dolphins next week on Monday Night Football at 8:00 PM, Eastern.

They already have a rule in the nfl limiting how many times teams from the east coast can travel to the west coast (with no rule protecting the west coast teams from that) in a season which makes west coast teams have to travel 3 times as far during a season, so naturally if London got a team the nfl would probably stick it in the NFC/AFC west to screw those teams more.

I think it's a good idea.

I think people are overstating the logistical problems. You have a team traveling (in a nice private team jet) once a week at most. In reality, probably the schedule will me made to put a few strings of home games in a row to reduce the number of trips for the London team.

The trip to the East Coast is not really worse than traveling between the East and West Coasts. And for teams traveling to London from the West Coast (or vice versa), that would only happen once or twice a season and the trip could be made a couple days earlier in the week to adjust for jet lag.

robsul82: Something about a jaguar wearing a monocle makes me laugh and laugh.

Jaguar would have a broken monocle while noosed from the sprinkler pipe.

Oh, and NFL, how about putting a team on Los Angeles before putting one in London? FFS, we're the 2nd biggest city in America, how have we not had a team for nearly 2 decades now?

Guys, it's not the travel time. Or not just the travel time. Imagine this scenario: the LA Vikings play the London Rams, in London, on a Sunday.

When does that game start? You're looking at an 8 hour difference in time zones. A West-Coaster usually starts their games at 10AM. Which means we're looking at 6PM in London. That's not an impossible time difference, but there's another problem: the NFL is competing in London during peak-time viewing.

And that's when you can make all your London games early games. Having one team playing early games all season is going to play all hell with scheduling. Also, keep in mind that you probably are going to get a lot of protest with teams going from a Sunday game to a Thursday game in the same week if one of those games is in London. So you'll have to schedule around that.

Then we get into the issue of the playoffs. Does London give up home field advantage and play in a surrogate home field? Or do we make sure that they're always playing early games then too?

So, let's review: you're taking a game Americans love and attempting to export it to another country that is fervent about pretty much everything but American sports. It's a complex and slow-paced game that requires a decent amount of watching before you can even begin to enjoy the game. By doing this export, you're adding 8-12 hour travel times (keep in mind, the teams, not the NFL, pay their travel costs), as well as going from a three hour scheduling gap due to time zones to an 8 hour scheduling gap, and for one team, that gap is always going to be at least 5 hours.

We'll get a London team sometime after the Bills move to Toronto.

HeartBurnKid: Oh, and NFL, how about putting a team on Los Angeles before putting one in London? FFS, we're the 2nd biggest city in America, how have we not had a team for nearly 2 decades now?

If you build it, they will come.

t3knomanser: Guys, it's not the travel time. Or not just the travel time. Imagine this scenario: the LA Vikings play the London Rams, in London, on a Sunday.

When does that game start? You're looking at an 8 hour difference in time zones. A West-Coaster usually starts their games at 10AM. Which means we're looking at 6PM in London. That's not an impossible time difference, but there's another problem: the NFL is competing in London during peak-time viewing.

And that's when you can make all your London games early games. Having one team playing early games all season is going to play all hell with scheduling. Also, keep in mind that you probably are going to get a lot of protest with teams going from a Sunday game to a Thursday game in the same week if one of those games is in London. So you'll have to schedule around that.

Then we get into the issue of the playoffs. Does London give up home field advantage and play in a surrogate home field? Or do we make sure that they're always playing early games then too?

So, let's review: you're taking a game Americans love and attempting to export it to another country that is fervent about pretty much everything but American sports. It's a complex and slow-paced game that requires a decent amount of watching before you can even begin to enjoy the game. By doing this export, you're adding 8-12 hour travel times (keep in mind, the teams, not the NFL, pay their travel costs), as well as going from a three hour scheduling gap due to time zones to an 8 hour scheduling gap, and for one team, that gap is always going to be at least 5 hours.

We'll get a London team sometime after the Bills move to Toronto.

West coast games start at 1 pm PT

Anyone else read the headline as:
Ladies and Gentlemen, your new England Patriots.

1. NFL Europe sucked, and really didn't have the financial backing they thought it would.
2. In London time, the start times for NFL games are 6pm, 9pm and 1am. While the first two work, the last - and most money-intensive from the NFL's standpoint - does not. And while it may not be as important from a novice fan's viewpoint to not have night football, it sure as hell would be grating on players.
3. There would be an 8 time zone difference between West Coast teams and the London team. Flights from London to NFL cities would be between 6 and 11 hours in flight time alone before the time zone factor. Currently, the longest flight time is 5 1/2 hours from Boston to San Francisco.
4. Soccer.
5. Visas.
6. Players won't want to go to London. (Percy Harvin's only the idiot who said it out loud, but you know he's not the only one thinking it.) Think about it: If you're some hotshot SEC kid who grew up in Orlando or some such shiat, London would be about as foreign as it gets.

While people are trying to white night 2, and 3, you can't ignore 1 or 6, and 4 and 5 are equally important. The long-term money just won't be there, and players just aren't gonna go for it.

dletter: Mrtraveler01: Why does the NFL keep insisting this?

Not only is this an incredibly stupid idea, but it would be a logistical nightmare to bring a whole team across the Atlantic every week.

Somehow, the WLAF did it for two seasons with 3 European teams in a league that didn't make nearly as much money as the NFL. And the NFL didn't bail because of the travel as much as the U.S. markets didn't react as well as they'd liked.

The logistics are not that hard.

The WLAF didn't survive, though, and that was when fuel costs were at early 90s levels. As someone whose family had season tickets to the Skyhawks? This is an incredibly bad idea. You don't see the Premiership adding expansion teams outside of England.

Globalizaion is not going to occur by diluting the home product.

FriarReb98: 1. NFL Europe sucked, and really didn't have the financial backing they thought it would.
2. In London time, the start times for NFL games are 6pm, 9pm and 1am. While the first two work, the last - and most money-intensive from the NFL's standpoint - does not. And while it may not be as important from a novice fan's viewpoint to not have night football, it sure as hell would be grating on players.
3. There would be an 8 time zone difference between West Coast teams and the London team. Flights from London to NFL cities would be between 6 and 11 hours in flight time alone before the time zone factor. Currently, the longest flight time is 5 1/2 hours from Boston to San Francisco.
4. Soccer.
5. Visas.
6. Players won't want to go to London. (Percy Harvin's only the idiot who said it out loud, but you know he's not the only one thinking it.) Think about it: If you're some hotshot SEC kid who grew up in Orlando or some such shiat, London would be about as foreign as it gets.

While people are trying to white night 2, and 3, you can't ignore 1 or 6, and 4 and 5 are equally important. The long-term money just won't be there, and players just aren't gonna go for it.

Not to mention they'd have a hell of time getting free agents. Between the high taxes and living in a place they perceive to be on the dark side of the moon the players they might draft would serve their rookie deals out and split.

Babwa Wawa: iron_city_ap: And the year London would play the NFC west would mean they travel to the west coast 2 weeks and 2 teams fly to london. The AFC West would be almost as bad. Mix in Monday night and Thursday games and that team will have an impossible time keeping players.

That's one year - or they could coordinate the move. They could do back to back weeks in London, back to back weeks traveling.

Or not. London is not freaking Bangalore, you know. Flight time from LA is 10 hours. It's not that bad on a chartered flight with nice seats.

czetie: What a stupid idea. You can get an audience for a game in London once a year as a treat for the American ex-pats and a freak show for the locals. As a regular event that attracts a dedicated local fan base? Not a hope in hell. There's no tradition of watching the game, or caring about the Colleges that feed the game, let alone playing the game. And with this misplaced, out-of-context, rootless game they're going to go up against soccer, the quintessentially traditional and local game? Do they have any idea how many established professional soccer teams there are in London?

What do you propose to continue growing the game then? More franchises in the US?

I'll grant you that they should be in Canada and Mexico as well, but if you package that up with a single team in London, it's entirely workable.

It's not like there isn't room for it. LA, San Antonio, OKC (they can support an NBA team, why not an NFL team?), Omaha (you may laugh, but I live there and we WILL fill a stadium to watch a crappy team play football, we did it with the Nighthawks, and Omaha/Lincoln people did it for four years under Bill Callahan), Salt Lake City, Columbus Ohio and maybe Sacramento, yea, no room for expansion here in the US

Nope. It's our national game. Why do these guys keep pushing for this, the team will be contracted in less than a decade. The reason football sells out there is because it's a novelty, the same as if Man U played a Premier League game here. If it became a regular thing people would lose interest, and for the same reason.

Keep it here. If there's international interest they have television to sate it, and if they are so desperate to see a game in person they have two to choose from or they can fly over here. Actually putting a team over there is folly.

Babwa Wawa: iron_city_ap: And the year London would play the NFC west would mean they travel to the west coast 2 weeks and 2 teams fly to london. The AFC West would be almost as bad. Mix in Monday night and Thursday games and that team will have an impossible time keeping players.

That's one year - or they could coordinate the move. They could do back to back weeks in London, back to back weeks traveling.

Or not. London is not freaking Bangalore, you know. Flight time from LA is 10 hours. It's not that bad on a chartered flight with nice seats.

czetie: What a stupid idea. You can get an audience for a game in London once a year as a treat for the American ex-pats and a freak show for the locals. As a regular event that attracts a dedicated local fan base? Not a hope in hell. There's no tradition of watching the game, or caring about the Colleges that feed the game, let alone playing the game. And with this misplaced, out-of-context, rootless game they're going to go up against soccer, the quintessentially traditional and local game? Do they have any idea how many established professional soccer teams there are in London?

What do you propose to continue growing the game then? More franchises in the US?

I'll grant you that they should be in Canada and Mexico as well, but if you package that up with a single team in London, it's entirely workable.



Already has a team

I think you'd have an easier time selling baseball to Europeans in the summer than American Football during soccer season.

London Jets

/Jim Bexley Speed

It's almost like the NFL is trying to destroy all it has built. British people don't like American football and the travel schedule just wont work. How about we put some teams in Canada first or maybe grow the sport internationally like the NBA (and I guess the NHL) did.

dletter: NFC West: Seattle, San Fran, St. Louis, Arizona, New Orleans, Atlanta

Who puts Atlanta in a WEST division? Do you know where Atlanta is? Do you need a map or like or the such as?


HeartBurnKid: Oh, and NFL, how about putting a team on Los Angeles before putting one in London? FFS, we're the 2nd biggest city in America, how have we not had a team for nearly 2 decades now?

Maybe they could move the Seahawks down there.


Adolf Oliver Nipples: Keep it here. If there's international interest they have television to sate it, and if they are so desperate to see a game in person they have two to choose from or they can fly over here. Actually putting a team over there is folly.

Ugh i hate agreeing with you. I need a hot shower.

Di Atribe: Who puts Atlanta in a WEST division? Do you know where Atlanta is? Do you need a map or like or the such as?

How about the 31 years they spent in that division?

Start with mexico and canada.

Ken VeryBigLiar: Di Atribe: Who puts Atlanta in a WEST division? Do you know where Atlanta is? Do you need a map or like or the such as?

How about the 31 years they spent in that division?

That doesn't make it any less 'tarded.