At the many media sessions held this week, the question most asked involved London as a permanent home for an NFL franchise. Will it happen? Should it happen? What will happen if it does happen?
Most Falcons and Lions sought to give anodyne answers, so as not to offend their hosts. Falcons coach Mike Smith, who works as hard as any man alive to say nothing, broke from character and actually hazarded a guess Friday, telling reporters:
“I think there are some logistical things that everybody is concerned about, but I think that the league has done lots of work on it, and I think they have some answers. I think it’s probably going to happen sooner than later. I think football, American football, is becoming popular outside the United States. I think the NFL is in an expansion mode.”
And here’s where I, contrarian that I am, say: No. Wrong. Ain’t happenin’.
Those “logistical things” aren’t trifles. A team flying here from the East Coast faces upwards of 15 hours, forth and back, aloft. The NFL has arranged it so that every team playing in London — the Falcons and Lions are the third and fourth this season, with the Cowboys and Jaguars to come — will have its bye week thereafter, but that would be more problematic if there were eight games here per year.
There’s also the matter of divisional makeup. As is, the Falcons play at Carolina, at New Orleans and at Tampa Bay every year. The longest of those flights is about an hour. What if the London Beefeaters (or whatever) were placed in the NFC South, necessitating a trip here every blessed autumn? Said quarterback Matt Ryan: “Some guys would be cool with it; some guys would want to keep division games close to home.”
And what of the London team? Would it fly to the U.S. on eight separate occasions? Would the NFL arrange it so that the Beefeaters could cluster two or three road games at a time? Would that even be fair?
(Lest we forget, when Walter O’Malley moved his Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, he convinced Horace Stoneham to transplant his Giants to San Francisco to provide local opposition. Would the NFL do the same? Would a league that has no team in L.A. put two in the U.K.?)
The NFL games at Wembley Stadium have done well. Falcons-Lions sold out in 24 hours, which is a darn sight better than the English national soccer did for its recent Euro 2016 qualifier against tiny San Marino. (The huge arena was half-full.) But the NFL games are more curiosities than ritual events.
“The novelty factor is double-backed by having different (NFL) teams every game,” said Richard Dean, a sports psychologist who works with Support Through Sports UK. “Would people support the Jaguars every week?”
As it happens, that’s the big rumor — that the wretched Jacksonville Jaguars could be the team to up sticks and move to London. (That would necessitate a bit of a pronunciation change. The Brits turn “Jaguars” into a three-syllable word.) Dean again: “In the beginning, you’d get crowds of 80,000 to 90,000. But then it might go down to 40,000 or 50,000. It’s been a market for a singular event; would that translate to a market for a team?”
Nobody knows, but it’s easy to guess. The world’s brand of football is England’s passion. “Nothing is going to usurp soccer as No. 1,” Dean said. “The question is, is there enough of a niche? I have my doubts.”
The NFL, see, isn’t accustomed to filling a niche. The NFL is the elephant on the sofa of every American living room. It’s hard to envision the Tiffany League willingly reducing itself to second-class status, even if it’s for the sake of global brand-building.
Think of English soccer as SEC football. Team loyalties run deep and wide. This country isn’t going to change in any significant way to wrap its arms around the NFL, at least not on a continuing basis. But if London should be granted a team, receiver Julio Jones had a tip for the locals.
“You’ll definitely have the upper hand,” he said this week, “especially if you don’t let (the opponent) come early. Let them come in on Friday, and you’ll kill them every time.”
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