NFL May Extend Regular Season A Week For 2009

By this time next season we may already be anticipating Week 2 rather than another Kickoff Weekend in the NFL.

The annual owners’ meeting in March will include serious discussion on increasing the regular-season schedule from 16 to 17 games, and reducing the number of preseason games from four to three.

The change in approach may come up sooner rather than later, but it appears destined to be kicked around eventually.

“It’ll get a full discussion at the March meeting,” Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney said. “The competition committee will review it. They start their discussions in February and then March is when we have the (owners’) meeting and that’s when it will get full deliberation. We’ll probably discuss it before then, and this (owners’) meeting that’s coming up in October would be the first chance to do that.

“I think it’ll be mentioned then.”

A 17th game would make it impossible for each team to play an equal number of home and road games. One of the early suggested scheduling alternatives will be to alternate by conference the hosting of a ninth game each season (the NFC one year, the AFC the next, etc.), so that each conference’s playoff race is contested on as level a playing field as possible.

The proliferation in recent years of organized team activities in the offseason and the reluctance on the part of many if not all coaches to risk starters in preseason games would seem to suggest that the NFL has arrived at a juncture in its history where the elimination of a preseason game or two makes sense.

“The commissioner (Roger Goodell) is pushing it,” Rooney said. “He has some clout.

“We could do it next year.”

Rooney doesn’t think the NFLPA would be opposed to such an audible.

“No,” he said. “We pay the players a percentage of the gross. If the 17th game produces a lot more money, they get their percentage of that.

“It’s pretty hard for them to complain about it. I think they would do it because it makes a lot of sense for them. You would be playing an extra league game, but you’d also get more sponsorship, more concessions.”

Steelers NFLPA player representative Charlie Batch agrees that the time is right to consider such a switch.

“As players you would probably want that,” Batch said. “That’s an extra game that would mean more than that last preseason game does (now).

“You have to deal with it regarding the revenues and how that’s going to be shared and different things. There’s more to talk about than saying ‘we’re going to add a game,’ but as players I don’t think we’ll mind that.”

One potential problem with a reduced preseason might be one less opportunity to afford you quarterbacks experience in a league that appears increasingly starved for talent at the position.

“The biggest drawback that I see is training quarterbacks,” Rooney said. “We gotta figure out a way to get them into the game and get some practical experience.”

- Pittsburgh Tribune Review