PS. We dont use tarps to cover empty seats Jacksonville

The NFL is the only major league not in Toronto n that’s only cuz the CFL n the bills prevented it before

RK TEAM GMS TOTAL AVG
24 Jacksonville8 504,262 63,032
25 Arizona 8 502,197 62,774
26 Chicago 8 497,561 62,195
27 Cincinnati8 482,917 60,364
28 Minnesota8 470,009 58,751
29 Detroit 8 450,286 56,285
30 St. Louis 8 423,383 52,922
31 Tampa Bay8 394,513 49,314
32 Oakland 8 371,448 46,431

ESPN

New term……NFL Hooligans

As of a few days ago, Jacksonville stations were reporting that the Jags still needed to sell 12,000 tickets to avoid a blackout in game one.

I dont think they are going anywhere either, but get your facts straight….

A little research does wonders…

Exiled1 says: “ . . . Would they play their first eight in the U.S. and last eight in England. Then wouldn’t that put an advantage to the London based team.”

The NFL would have to adopt something other than the traditional “Home-Road-Home” game rotation for a London-based team. It might be a little strange, but doing so would eliminate quite a bit of the transatlantic air time. Say the HM Privateers played three games in Wembly Stadium; then flew to Charlotte to play the Panthers. From there, it’s a short hop to Atlanta (probably about a 90 minute flight?) for a game against the Falcons, and then another maybe two-hour flight to New Orleans. Then back to London for another three Home Games. This year the Bucs are scheduled to play the Vikings, the 49ers, the Packers, and the Jaguars for their nondivisional “away” games, so let’s work with that schedule for the sake of this argument. The Privateers take their “Bye” week after the second round of “Home” games, then fly to San Francisco for the 49ers game. Yeah, that’s a really long flight, but that’s why it would coincide with the “Bye.” The team then flies to Minneapolis for the Vikings game, puddle-jumps to Green Bay for the Packers, and finishes out the trip in Jacksonville for the Jaguars. After that, they’re back to London to finish out the season with three more home games.
My guess is that the team would be flying private or charter for the transatlantic trips, so they could probably shave what would be an 11- or 12-hour trip on a commercial carrier down to about 9 hours. It seems like it would all be fairly workable.

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eastsideballa says: “Greed will destroy the NFL, and I cant wait until it goes up in flames just to see these greedy ***** go broke.”

I suspect that if the NFL “goes up in flames” you will be devastated. There’s too much emotion in your post to think otherwise

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buckeye2280 says: “Wouldn’t a move to London cause a huge fight with the NFLPA and trying to move players to Europe. I don’t know about you but I would think a change like that might cause players who don’t wish to move to automatically become FA’s.”

You presume that there are a significant number of players who would be opposed to playing and/or living in Britain for part of the year. How many players currently reside year-round in the city in which they play home games? Of those that don’t, how many of them are allowed to “fly home” during the season? I seem to recall that Gus Frerotte had an arrangement like that with the Vikings, and that was quite a notable exception to the rule

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shackdelrio says: “An NFL team in London would be a total disaster. Players would not want to play there. Coaches would not want to coach there. It would be a failure.”

And you base this on what, exactly? How many players or coaches have you spoken with about this issue?
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schmitty2 says “London=bad idea. Beer and hot dogs would be replaced by tea and crumpets”

Watery Anheuser-Bush products and hot dogs replaced by superior beer and banger sausages. Seems like a pretty fair trade.

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Because without the tarps, the stadium seats 77,000 and that is just too big for most NFL markets. With the tarps, the stadium holds 67,000, and that is still not small for an NFL stadium.

I don’t know how many times we have to explain this, but I guess we’ll keep doing it, because the tarps aren’t coming off, and the Jags aren’t leaving Jacksonville.

London only makes sense if the NFL re-organizes the AFC or NFC East to pull it off. If Buffalo relocates elsewhere, swap their position with whatever franchise sent to London. It’d be cool to have the Pats play the Brits; may even be like an old school college rivalry on geographic location alone.

Geographically speaking, the NFC East could also bear a European team, wherein Dallas would move to the NFC South. Although it’s doubtful Jerry would go for this, it would make for some interesting games/fan interaction with Washington DC, Philly and NY teams going against a Euro team.

It could be a real boost in economics and interest across the board since the East conferences host cities with huge population centers. Regardless what the league does,
there should be 2 teams in Europe for it to be worth while.

The NFL sells out 1 game a year in London, ONE, and that somehow translates to a franchise being placed there. You throw in another 7 games with the same team each and every time at the same high prices and you’ll see plenty of blackouts there too.
Fans of all 32 teams spend the money to go to one game a year because it feels like an event, once it becomes a full season people will soon get bored of traveling to London (a place that nobody north of London even likes, how about a game somewhere more central?), getting ripped off, etc.
Plus those fans of the other 31 teams can’t be relied upon to attend every game so the fanbase would need to be built up almost from scratch. It would be worse than the situation in Tampa.

Then when you throw in the logistics of a team having to fly all the way over the Atlantic mutiple times just reach their nearest away games (imagine the travel for a London Bucs @ Seattle Seahawks game), draft picks refusing to sign with the Bucs due to location and UK tax.

A London franchise is more laughable than the idea that Matt “Melted Ice” Ryan is an elite QB.

I empathize with the economically distraught people in the Tampa/St. Pete area, but there are more economically ravaged cities that have football stadiums packed. Those kinds of cities are showing us that the Bucs’ regional fans are doing them a disservice.

How could you not blame someone to have a thought for a Los Angeles move???

The owners of teams who struggle with attendance need to do three simple things to avoid blackouts

1. Put a product on the field that the fans can enjoy watching.

2. Charge reasonable ticket prices so that fans can afford to attend the good product being provided. Also, provide reasonably priced consessions that are somewhat edible. I cannot even imagine what the mark-up is on the $8 hockey puck they try to pass off as a hamburger.

3. If you play in a crappy stadium, get your ass into a new one, and not at the taxpayers expense. Afterall, your poor product and exorbinant prices don’t engender loyalty, especially when you want 7 cents of every dollar to fund your own personal Taj Mahal.

I think the London experiment has been cute, but when they play that game down in Mexico City, it draws a crazy amount of fans too. I think the NFL would be wiser, to promote travel packages for European fans, where they could maybe go to like 3 games in a row of their fav team, do a little meet and greet etc. The logistics on playing games 7hrs away from NYC would be immense. You’d ask west coast teams to go on the road for 2 or 3 weeks, to play an East coast team followed up by the London squad. IDK. seems a bit much for American’s game.

But the time difference is like 6 hours so you’d almost have to play Sunday evening their time for every game. And it would be a rather long flight if you were coming from the West coast.

The Bucs had an alright team last year and still couldn’t sell out a game. And the team won a superbowl not that long ago so it isn’t like they’ve sucked forever. I’d rather they moved to LA though so my Vikings wouldn’t be on the hook for a stadium.

The Bucs moving is ludicrous as is the idea of a team in London.

NFL soon to be INFL? International Football League.

No thanks.