Roger Goodell, the 18 Game Regular Season, and the Record Books The NFL is underway and in full stride yet again. Osi Umenyiora, Tom Brady, and yes, even Michael Vick and Brett Favre are back too. While these are the top stories of the 2009 season, there is one story that has not received much coverage. At the NFL owners meeting this March, Roger Goodell brought up the subject of expanding the regular season to seventeen or eighteen games. This would not take place until, at the earliest and most likely, the 2011 season. Before all of this happens though, the NFL has to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union and also discuss it with the owners and television networks.
Roger Goodell wants to leave his mark on the NFL. He wants a legacy as NFL commissioner. He began his tenure as NFL commissioner being an enforcer. Goodell wanted to clean up the image of the league and did that by levying lofty suspensions against players such as Adam Jones, Chris Henry, Tank Johnson, Plaxico Burress, Donte’ Stallworth, and Michael Vick. All of these players deserved some sort of punishment and Goodell made sure these players would pay for their actions. Goodell was so serious about cleaning up the league that he even fined Bill Belichik half a million dollars and took away a 2009 first round draft pick from the New England Patriots for the infamous “spygate” incident.
Roger Goodell quickly made his point to the entire league that there was a new sheriff in town and that NFL players would be role models or would be unemployed. Players, and even coaches and owners alike would be held accountable for their actions on and off the field. Roger Goodell had made an example of many players and has now left his mark as an enforcer just like he wanted to. While I applaud Goodell for his efforts in cleaning up the most popular sports league in North America, I fault him for trying to be this revolutionary commissioner. As commissioner, your job is to oversee the league and make sure everything is successful and running smoothly. Pretty much a commissioner is just one big supervisor. Therefore, being a supervisor, you should leave no more than one mark on your league. Look at Bud Selig for example. He is a terrible commissioner for Major League Baseball and has left four huge marks on the game. The one good mark Selig left on the MLB is the addition of the Wild Card. His other three marks are his poor handlings of the Pete Rose situation, the players’ strike in 1994, and the steroids era. David Stern left one mark on the NBA and that was his expansion of the game to the rest of the world. By adding most likely two more games, Goodell adds risky chapters to a short legacy that, so far, has been pretty good.
Goodell sees an eighteen game schedule as two more chances to put his league on a grand stage. I guess games in London and Toronto were not good enough. He sees the preseason as meaningless and thinks that four games are just too much. Goodell also sees an opportunity for more money from NBC, FOX, ESPN, and the NFL Network. Goodell also sees, especially in small markets, greater attendance, therefore more money. Since many small market teams do not get big numbers in preseason, Goodell believes these two extra ball games (which would mean one home game) would generate enough revenue to help these small markets and the NFL in general.
While all of these are positives, what could the negatives be? The negatives are much larger in numbers than the positives. First of all, what is play in September going to look like? Look at Peyton Manning last year. Manning missed the entire 2008 preseason because of a knee injury. In his first three starts back, Manning was terrible and the Colts got off to a 1-2 start. Manning even admitted that he was not in rhythm because he could not get his timing down during the preseason. Once Manning got those three games under his belt and regained his timing, he went on to lead the Colts to an 11-2 record down the stretch and win his third MVP award.
Sloppy play in September is only one problem. What about the Super Bowl? Will the nation’s biggest football game really be held in mid to late February? And what about the players? Goodell says he plans to pay the players the same as ever. The players want eighteen game checks if they play eighteen games. Goodell says because the players have two fewer preseason games, that their salaries will remain the same.
Another negative for the players is career length. At eighteen games a year over five years, that would be ten extra full-length football games these players would have to play. That is around twenty games per full career. Twenty games is more than a full season. This means that you will shorten long careers by more than a full year. Also, with all of the lawsuits and grievances being filed by ex-players against the NFL for health problems, does the NFL really want to put these men out there for two more games at the end of the season when their bodies are at their weakest? This will just create injuries and the fans will not be able to see all of the superstars in the postseason because their favorite player was injured in week 19.
I believe the biggest reason not to change the season to seventeen or eighteen games is the single season records. Yes, the regular season was changed from 14 games to 16 games in 1978 and I know that affected many records. But since 1978, the biggest single season records have been set. The rushing record set by Eric Dickerson in 1984 with the L.A. Rams, the passing record set by Dan Marino that same year with the Miami Dolphins in 1984, and the touchdown passes record set by Tom Brady in 2007 with the New England Patriots. In 1978, sacks were not even counted as an official stat so I think it is fine to start the single season record books in 1978. Each one of these records would be shattered immediately (probably by Drew Brees and Adrian Peterson) if the season went to eighteen games, and the NFL record book would start to become as false as baseball’s is now. And yes, I keep saying eighteen instead of seventeen or eighteen because there is no way the NFL owners would allow their team to play 8 home games and 9 road games while their division rival has the opposite. And yes, I keep saying single season and not career because careers will not last as long with eighteen games.
Roger Goodell has done a fabulous job as NFL commissioner to date. If this proposal is passed at the owners meeting and passed by the players union in May of 2010, he will become a Bud Selig. Goodell saw that players and other NFL employees needed to be held accountable for their behavior off the field. By doing this he fixed what needed to be fixed in the NFL. Now everything is fixed. Nothing is broken. So if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Goodell needs to ask himself this question.
-scf
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