The league is considering shortening the preseason by two games, and this means the owners would only be selling nine home games instead of ten, so the fix is to tack on two games to the regular season schedule, for a total of 18 regular games plus two preseason games. The owners fully support this idea, but the players aren’t so sure, since it would increase the risk of injury and not necessarily change the amount of money they take home each week.
Tim Cowlishaw, Dallas Morning News: …an 18-game season will do little more than increase the threat of injuries that shorten players’ seasons and careers. Beyond that, it will spoil the symmetry and balance of the 16-game season, dismissing the significance of the league’s record book and creating less, not more, drama as the regular season winds to conclusion. The owners’ problem starts with this. They have grown accustomed to 20 games (16 regular, four preseason), which means a 10-game season ticket package. Customers have willingly gone along with paying full price for these exhibitions, even though the stars of the league tend to make only cameo appearances in certain games. The 16-game season, adopted in 1978, breaks up neatly into four quarters. It’s just the right length for sustained drama from start to finish. There is something to be said for not overexposing your product, even one with the appeal of the NFL. Even if the format has been around only 32 years, at least you can compare the play of today’s young quarterbacks and running backs to what Dan Marino was doing in the ’80s or Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders were achieving in the ’90s. And if you’re not worried about losing that, then consider this. Each season, the subject of whether or not the league’s best teams should rest their starters the last game or two before the playoffs is debated. Goodell even said last year he would consider forcing teams to play starters in these situations. Now picture the 18-game season. See the Colts sitting there at 12-2 with a month to go and no team in their division better than 7-7? You think that won’t happen, whether it’s the Colts or someone else?
Anthony Stalter, The Scores Report: The owners can’t get their way across the board – they have to compromise. They can’t generate an annual profit, force the players to take a pay cut, add two more games to the regular season (which increases the players’ risk of injuries and future health problems) and then keep the additional revenue that they make off the new schedule. That’s ridiculous. I could see if the owners were taking a bath while players’ salaries continue to go up, but it stands to reason that the owners are making plenty of money when they’re charging upwards for $100 per ticket, $30 to park and $8.50 for a beer. Trust me, I’m not losing sleep at night thinking about how these million dollar athletes are getting screwed. But keeping things in context, the players would be getting a raw deal if the league expanded the schedule and the owners didn’t share the revenue. Everybody is making money in the NFL – this is no time for the owners to be greedy. Plus, the players are the ones putting themselves at risk of injury – shouldn’t they be compensated?
Andrew Brandt, CNN: Players are now paid in weekly installments through the 16-game season. For example, a player making $1.6 million receives a $100,000 check for every game. With the enhanced season, players and their union want prorated checks for the extra two games. But the owners say it’s not as simple as that. They say that the revenue from the two added games would be part of overall league revenue, from which the players already receive a negotiated share. That share is used to compute the salary cap, which teams use, in turn, to negotiate individual player contracts. And those contract numbers don’t change, no matter how many games are played. Presumably, the added revenue would work out to the players’ benefit, in the form of a higher salary cap and more negotiable dollars for each team to use. But it would not be as clear-cut as two extra game checks.
Patrick Hruby, ESPN.com: Indeed, the 16-game regular season already is a matter of attrition and survival: a league-wide study pegged the average per game, per team injury rate at 2.7 players. Two additional games wouldn’t increase that number; it only would transfer some of the existing injury risk from preseason backups and warm bodies to starters and top subs. That’s a small price to pay for more games, given that the union figures to negotiate a congruent salary bump, and that its public position on the matter smells an awful lot like CBA posturing. Others worry about the sanctity of the NFL record book. Lengthen the season, they argue, and pretty soon records such as Dan Marino’s 5,084 single-season passing yards will fall by the wayside. True enough. But really, who cares? League records have scant sanctity to begin with, largely because the NFL previously expanded from 12 to 14 games, then from 14 to 16. Does anyone believe that Jim Brown’s single-season rushing high of 1,863 yards — set in the 14-game 1963 season — is less impressive than Ahman Green’s 1,883 yards in 2003? Does anyone think Brown wasn’t as good as LaDainian Tomlinson, who has three seasons with more than 1,600 rushing yards to Brown’s one?
