A RADICAL PROPOSAL

Football players and management seem to be concerned about the following issues (in no order)
-Maximizing revenue
-Player safety
-Maintaining quality of the product

The owners answer seems to be go to an 18 game schedule, enlarge rosters, tighten head shot rules and add another bye week. The players are concerned about injuries etc in an 18 game season. OK, how about this.

PLAY FOOTBALL EVERY OTHER WEEK AND EXPAND THE SEASON TO EIGHTEEN GAMES

Start in April and end the season in February like they do now.

Advantages
-Players get two weeks to heal between games. That means more stars on the field for more games and more plays. More time to recover from everything from from concussions to ankle sprains.
-Far more scheduling flexibility for Thursday or Saturday games.
-Far easier this way to introduce international play as flying to London or Frankfurt with a two week gap is much easier on the body, practice etc.
-Football stays in the public eye even more constantly that it does now.
-More games? More revenue.
-More outdoor, warm weather games.

Disadvantages

-Really begins to take on baseball/Nascar directly
-What do we fans do on "Off Sundays?"
-Can product be as sharp every other week?

What say you?

I'm not a fan of 18 games. Nor do I like idea of football starting in April.

One of many things I like about football is, the seasons are not drawn out like baseball or basketball.

16 regular games where each game has some importance.

Ratings would definitly take a hit, because summer time people are out doing stuff on the weekend. Vacations, ect.

GrantZilla wrote:I'm not a fan of 18 games. Nor do I like idea of football starting in April.

One of many things I like about football is, the seasons are not drawn out like baseball or basketball.

16 regular games where each game has some importance.

Ratings would definitly take a hit, because summer time people are out doing stuff on the weekend. Vacations, ect.

Good point.

Marble I think you are on to something only I would change one thing, instead of every team having a week break starting in week 1, I would do something like AFC season starts week 1, NFC starts week 2

that way you have football every weekend, get to see more teams than we normaly would, and the players would be getting a week braek in between

Maybe not go AFC NFC but you get what i mean have a cycle so everyone is playing and resting

bird wrote:Marble I think you are on to something only I would change one thing, instead of every team having a week break starting in week 1, I would do something like AFC season starts week 1, NFC starts week 2

that way you have football every weekend, get to see more teams than we normaly would, and the players would be getting a week braek in between

Maybe not go AFC NFC but you get what i mean have a cycle so everyone is playing and resting

Excellent idea. I think what that likely means is on occasions of interleague play some games would be played where a team only had one week's rest. Sort of the reverse of the bye week.

stay with the 16 games as it is..