Future NFL

[popanot]

Some interesting comments in King's MMQB this week:

“The owners want to extend the playoffs into February. The owners want to play the Super Bowl on President’s Day weekend, a four-day weekend that would turn the Super Bowl into a bigger event. When I brought up the idea of bidding out the Super Bowl, the owners jumped at the idea. They loved it. They want 18 games because they believe that it’s worth anywhere from $3 billion to $4 billion per year. Let me repeat: $3 billion to $4 billion every year. For the players, that means that the salary cap would go up by anywhere from $46 million to $62 million per team. Yes, the salary cap could be more than $200 million in an 18-game season. That’s if you do it on your terms.”

—NFL Players Association executive director candidate Sean Gilbert, in his closing speech to NFL player reps and alternate player reps at their annual meeting in Hawaii on Sunday night. Andrew Brandt of The MMQB will have a report on the outcome of the election on this site later this morning.

My thoughts:
1. I hate waiting it out for the Super Bowl, but I kind of like the idea of it being on a long weekend.

2. I'm good with 18 games, but only if it means cutting out 2 crap preseason games. I know it would take away from rookie and free agent acclimation, development and preparation, and it might lead to some pretty bad football the first few weeks of the regular season, but nothing is worse than the first and forth weeks of preseason.

3. Of course the owners would love the idea of bidding out of the Super Bowl. Municipalities already are willing to take it up the you-know-what to subsidize their stadiums so I'm sure there are plenty (even non-NFL cities) willing to take it up the you-know-what to buy a Super Bowl. They've already started the bid trend with the NFL draft. Why not put the Crown Jewel up for bid? Man, NFL owners have it made...