<\/p>\n
Jimmy the Greek said that he was once told he will be rich and poor seven times in his life so be careful with the seventh. <\/span>Every NFL owner can tell you a story about how broke they were; they tell that story because they want you to think they\u2019re just like you. <\/span>But that\u2019s not true. <\/span>I know everyone wants you to believe they\u2019re just good business men, they\u2019re not- they\u2019re craps players on a hot streak and they will all play long enough to give it back to the house. I point this out because they will ruin football if we let them. <\/span>They will stretch the season to 18 weeks. <\/span>They will lock those same players out without accounting for the damage that it will do to the league. <\/span>These guys can make MC Hammer seem like Jim Cramer. <\/span>And they will do it for short-term money, costing themselves billions in the long-run, and they will do it because they aren\u2019t good at this. <\/span>So we have to propose something bold if we are going to right the ship. <\/span> Bold ideas are never popular. <\/span>Some (most?) of you aren\u2019t going to hate it. <\/span>In fact this is probably going to be like explaining to your mother why you broke up with the girl she likes and that you\u2019re now dating a chick with a tongue-ring but just hear me out. <\/span> Every European soccer league has their regular season and a separate \u201cCup competition.\u201d <\/span>It\u2019s essentially a playoff system that happens during the season. <\/span>I know it sounds a little weird compared to the season-then-playoff system that we\u2019re used to but it ends up creating a whole other thing to care about. <\/span>Sometimes a team that isn\u2019t that good over the long-run finds a way to sprint through the Cup competition and knock off some of the bigger teams- like Portsmith did a few years ago- other times the cream rises and you see the best teams have yet another battle- like the Man U\/Chelsea games that we\u2019ve seen over the last few years. <\/span> There are a lot of amazing things a tournament like this could do for the NFL, not the least of which is address some of the sports big problems. <\/span>Problems such as: one, NFL owners want to cut the preseason in half. <\/span>Two, the NFL wants to make more money. <\/span>Three, the day after the Super Bowl sucks. <\/span>And four, we need more football. <\/span>(Ok the last two aren\u2019t really something the owners are trying to address but they are problems so I\u2019ll fix them anyway.) <\/span> Ok, first: the preseason<\/strong>. <\/span>The owners claim it\u2019s because season-ticket holders don\u2019t want to pay full-price for preseason games. <\/span>I am a season ticket holder, and it does suck to pay full-price for preseason games; now I think the owners could fix this by, I don\u2019t know, not-charging-full-price! <\/span>But that\u2019s just me; I guess that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t make a billion dollars in oil exploration (Jerry Jones), or by being friends with Bill Gates (Paul Allen), or by selling human blood to other vampires (Al Davis), or by whatever Daniel Snyder did to make his money. <\/span>Seriously even Wikipedia can\u2019t explain to me what Snyder\u2019s company did before he sold it for a gazillion dollars. <\/span>It\u2019s entirely possible he made a dummy corporation then talked it up enough to sell it for a lot of money, in fact given his history as an NFL owner, I\u2019m sure that\u2019s exactly how he made his fortune. <\/span> Which brings me to Problem Two- the NFL wants to make more money<\/strong>. <\/span>Do you know what the NFL Players Union\u2019s number 1 demand is? <\/span>Let them see the books. <\/span>Not the public, just them. <\/span>Once. <\/span>So they can see if the owners are actually losing money. <\/span>*Spoiler alert*: They\u2019re not. <\/span>But they\u2019re still telling the players to take a pay cut. <\/span>This would be like big companies making huge mistakes, screwing their employees, and then asking the government for free money so they can continue to screw their employees. <\/span>Oh. <\/span>Well ok but the NFL is still worse, because their employees\u2019 average career is 3 years and contracts aren\u2019t guaranteed. <\/span>I know we bitch and moan every time our favorite player holds out for a better contract but they\u2019ll keep doing that until contracts actually go both ways. <\/span> Problem Three- the day after the Super Bowl sucks<\/strong>. <\/span>This isn\u2019t so much a problem as much as it is me commandeering one of the benefits from the 18-week-long season plan. <\/span>If they pushed the season two weeks longer, then the Super Bowl would be on President\u2019s Day weekend. <\/span>In other words, we would get the day after the Super Bowl off (which frankly always should have been a holiday.) <\/span> Problem Four- we need more football but an 18-game regular season sucks<\/strong>. <\/span>It sucks because you can\u2019t just add games you need to add time off too, it sucks because it ruins the stats that we like (4000 yd seasons, 12 yard receivers, etc.), it sucks because if the Colts are 14-0 and the next best team is 10-4 then we have four weeks of the Colts tanking. <\/span>But not having football sucks too. <\/span> So we need more football, that makes more money, that\u2019s fair for the players, that doesn\u2019t screw up the season as it is now. <\/span>Easy. <\/span> So again, let\u2019s look at English football. <\/span>They have 4 competitions- a regular season, two playoff-style tournaments, and a European-wide tournament. <\/span>The international tournament isn\u2019t really an option for American football; it\u2019s not like we can challenge China to a football-tournament. <\/span>(Although we should, and make it worth our debt to them- double or nothing. <\/span>We weren\u2019t really going to pay them back anyway.) <\/span>But a single domestic tournament, separate from the regular season\/playoffs? <\/span>That totally could work. <\/span>It takes 5 games to get from 32 teams down to 1 champion. <\/span>It\u2019s got to be sponsored so let\u2019s call it the Visa Cup sponsored by Nike brought to you by Coca-Cola. <\/span>So here\u2019s what we do: A five-game tournament, the first two games of the VCsbNbtybCC (Visa Cup sponsored by Nike brought to you by Coca-Cola) would happen instead of the last two preseason games. <\/span>Coin flip for who gets home field in the first round, then if a road team makes it to the second round get them a home game in round 2, otherwise coin flip home field for round 2. <\/span>Pool all the money for tickets and split it among all the teams (since some teams will have fewer home games than others.) <\/span> Then somewhere during the season (I\u2019m thinking somewhere in Weeks 10-12) make a league-wide bye, but put Round 3 in there. <\/span>There will be only 8 teams that have to play this week. <\/span>Usually the NFL splits the bye weeks up so the networks have enough games to choose from, but if you give 24 teams this week off the networks will still show the Visa Cup games. <\/span>Put those 4 games in places the league wants to grow- London, Germany, Los Angeles, heck even Vegas. <\/span>Scatter these games around the world and then give these 8 teams the following week for their bye. <\/span>Suddenly just about every team is on equal footing bye-week wise. <\/span> Make Round 4 after the regular season. <\/span>It will be only 4 teams left- so only two games that day. <\/span>Every playoff team would have a bye this week, except these 4 teams. <\/span>Yes these four teams will miss out on the bye week that everybody else has, but it only really hurts if these teams also make the playoffs. <\/span>Will that happen? <\/span>Sometimes; but as the English Cup tournaments have shown there are a lot of smaller teams that get eliminated from regular season contention and this Cup gives them something to still strive for. <\/span> The following week will be the wildcard games, then the division games. <\/span>Make the next week another bye week and put the Visa Cup sponsored by Nike brought to you by Coca-Cola Championship on this weekend. <\/span>It will be the weekend that the AFC\/NFC Championships usually happen and then those games will happen in the first week of February. There are a few \u201ccons\u201d to this Tournament. <\/span>Half the league will be eliminated in Round 1 depriving them of a 4th preseason games. <\/span>Do I think it\u2019s a big deal if a team gets only 3 exhibition games, instead of 4? <\/span>Um, No. <\/span>You also have the \u201ctoo many games\u201d problem; if a team makes the Cup Championship AND the Super Bowl, then they could conceivably play 24 games in 26 weeks. <\/span>A bit much, but the FA Cup in England has proven that either teams cope with this or they make it a lower priority, lose, and then focus on the regular playoffs, and this tournament would give a playoff team (that isn\u2019t in the Cup) at least 2 more weeks off throughout the year. <\/span>Meanwhile teams like the Niners and Falcons that blew a few too many regular season games instead can hunker down and give their season a Championship makeover. <\/span> Another concern is that teams won\u2019t take it seriously. <\/span>As Mike put it: \u201cIf the Colts don\u2019t care about 19-0, why would they care about this?\u201d <\/span>And the real answer is: they might not. <\/span>There\u2019s no history to it, it\u2019s added on top of an already long season. <\/span>The teams might kick this idea to the curb. <\/span>But, what if they don\u2019t? <\/span>What if Bill Belichick realizes this is yet another thing to win? <\/span>Every Championship had to start somewhere, even March Madness started as just a month-long exhibition. <\/span>But what if all the teams decided \u201cHey we play our starters all during the 3rd preseason game anyway, why not go win this Round 1 game?\u201d <\/span>Then they do the same thing for Round 2 (preseason game 4), then suddenly a couple early losses blows their chance at the Super Bowl, well suddenly there\u2019s a real, competitive, Plan B. <\/span>The Colts were idiotic for not caring about 19-0; most teams will care about this because they want to win whatever\u2019s in front of them. <\/span>In fact, what if one team (I\u2019m looking in Belichick\u2019s direction again) decides that 24-0 is something worth going for? But if the simple pride isn\u2019t enough? Well, then it\u2019s a good thing this is actually all about the money. <\/span>That is what this tournament is all about afterall. <\/span>In addition to our Visa, Nike, Coca-cola sponsorships, what about the TV revenue- that mind you, will now be on top of the regular season TV contracts? <\/span>What about DirecTV saying: \u201cThere\u2019s 16 games that first Round, only 3 or 4 will be on regular networks. <\/span>So we\u2019ll set up a separate Sunday Ticket package for every game.\u201d <\/span>And 5 extra weeks of games means the teams should expand their rosters, i.e. more NFL jobs; think the players\u2019 union would like to expand their ranks be 200 more guys per year? Clearly this idea is not perfect and I\u2019m open for other ideas (put it in the Spring as a way to make the game more year-round?) <\/span>But if the NFL thinks they\u2019re going to expand the season without paying the players more then they\u2019re nuts. <\/span>This lets them add more games (read: revenue) while not violating the regular season. <\/span>I think this idea is clearly worth a roll of the dice. <\/span>Know any craps players willing to take a chance?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fed up with all this CBA BS in the NFL? Never fear, Leaky Pipes is here to remind you there’s a bunch more wrong with the NFL, and he uses soccer as an example. Thanks, buddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}