18 games would really tax NFL players
Mar 26, 2009
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has half of the equation right when he says the league should turn two preseason football games into regular-season games.
By all means, the preseason should be shortened. The preseason is marked by too many injuries, too many empty seats, and too many high prices. NFL players don’t need training camps to open in mid-July to be prepared for a season that starts in early September.
But 18 games is a different matter.
From a fan perspective, it sounds great. More games on TV and more meaningful NFL weekends.
But this isn’t a sport played out in plasma. Just visit an NFL locker room in late November and you’ll see the toll a 16-week season takes on a player’s body.
The fingers of offensive linemen are gnawed and purple from being stepped on for weeks. The shoulders of running backs are wrapped in ice. The defensive linemen limp out of the showers.
North Carolina point guard Ty Lawson took a pain-killing shot to play basketball against Duke, and whether he should or should not have done that has been widely debated. But heck, that’s an every week occurrence in the NFL. Every player knows the waiver wire is always waiting and will do what he can to get on the field.
An NFL season isn’t so much a series of games as it is a war of attrition. What looks so pretty and neat on television feels like hand-to-hand combat at field level.
If the NFL expands to 18 games, it should also expand the roster so more players are available to teams. And it should also create a true development league, which is what it thought it would have in the 1990s with the World League of American Football.
An 18-game season could be great for television and fans, but the welfare of the players has to be considered. This brutal sport will become even tougher for players if the regular season expands.
