Dreaming a Mega NFL Expansion

The National Football League is by far the best sports league in North America. This is a fact, not an opinion. The NFL makes about nine billion dollars a year. To compare, that is about as much as pro baseball (six billion) and hockey (three billion) make combined. Basketball fans don't get your hopes up either because the NBA is trying to avoid coming last in the ranking, not fighting for first. They make roughly four billion (although with the forming of 'super teams' becoming more common it's only a matter of time before the NBA equals and then passes the MLB). You can't argue against the NFL when they are ahead of the competition by three billion dollars. Now I know what some of you will shoot back with, "Just because it makes the most money, doesn't make it the best." Oh really? So then please explain to me how a sport in which each team plays 24 total games (preseason, season, postseason) makes billions and billions of dollars more than three sports in which each plays four times as many games per year? The only explanation is that it is better.

Now that I've convinced everyone that the NFL is the best, it's time to switch gears to what I really want to talk about, expansion. Right now the NFL is a 32-team, 8-division, 4 teams-per-division league. I would like to know what is preventing it from becoming a 40-team, 8-division, 5 team-per-division league. The way I see it, there are plenty of cities that would be worthy of a NFL team and there are plenty of current NFL backup and unsigned players worthy of starting on a NFL team. Scheduling wouldn't be that big of a problem either as adding eight teams comes down to fitting in four more games a week, which could be done a number of different ways (my favorite is to expand Thursday and Monday night football to two games and give CBS and FOX each another 4:25 game on Sunday). This expansion makes even more sense when you consider that three cities are already dying for a team. Los Angeles has wanted a team ever since the Rams left while the NFL has been hosting games in Toronto and London for several years now with what looks like the goal to put teams there permanently. Throw in another obvious city to put a team, Las Vegas, and you have half the expansion done already. The other four cities would be less obvious, but the NFL could definitely find four good cities (my votes are: Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Orlando, and somewhere in Nebraska).

The main argument against this mega expansion would be that the competition would be severely diluted. My question would be how? From college kids that don't get drafted because they weren't noticed or overplayed in the media to arena league players to players from the Canadian Football league, there are plenty of talented players that could suit up and do well in the NFL. For every Peyton Manning, Adrian Peterson, and Ray Lewis, there is a Tom Brady, Arian Foster, and Cameron Wake. All six of these players are very good football players. The difference between them is that the first three were supposed to be stars while the other three weren't supposed to be anything. But the other three were given a chance and they became stars. Do you know the reason why Foster wasn't drafted? His junior year he had a great year, but he decided to return to college instead of going pro. During his senior year he was got injured and he fell off the map. No team even took a flier on him in the later rounds. He worked his butt off on the Texans practice squad, got his chance to start due to injuries, and the rest is history. Arian Foster can't be the only player that has been overlooked by the NFL. Expanding to 40 teams may force teams to think outside the box when drafting and more hidden gems like Foster would be discovered.

Another common misconception would be that the players would not approve because they'd have to play more games. Yes, more games would be played, but that'd be because of the increase in teams, not an increase in the schedule. The NFL schedule would not need to grow to accommodate more teams. Therefore, players would still be playing 16 regular season games a year. What would change is how often they'd play teams out of their division. With five team divisions, each team would obviously play 10 divisional games and six non-divisional games. I think putting more emphasis on divisional games would make winning the division harder as teams tend to player division rivals a little harder than their other opponents. The Patriots-Jets game last week was proof of this. While the Patriots are the far better team, especially with all the Jet injuries, it still took overtime for them to beat the Jets, 23-20. A potential problem with 10 divisional games would be if a team found a way to sweep their division then they'd have a good chance to make the playoffs even if they lost their other six games. Of course, I would respond by noting how unlikely this would be because coaches would be the first to realize this and spend more time preparing for divisional games, making it much harder to win divisional match-ups. I could also remind you of how difficult it would be to reach the playoffs if a team didn't do very well in divisional play. Either way, playing a schedule with more divisional games wouldn't have as much of an effect on the playoffs as one would think.

Us NFL fans would undoubtedly welcome more games played each week. Selling us on expansion wouldn't be too hard. However, it might be hard to sell expansion on the existing owners. More teams just means more people to split revenue with, right? This is indeed true, but more teams also means more money. Theoretically speaking, if the NFL makes nine billion dollars in revenue, that means, on average, each team makes 281.25 million dollars. Adding eight teams increases league revenue to roughly 13.5 billion dollars and each team makes 337.50 million dollars, on average. In this instance, the owners make an additional 56.25 million dollars, but in reality they would make much more as TV contracts would have to be re-negotiated to fit the expanded league and merchandise numbers would increase eight times in accordance to the new teams. Plus, the eight new owners would have to pay entry fees to join the league. These numbers would only come into fruition after the league has reached 40 teams. The numbers vary drastically depending on how the league attacks the expansion plan.

Deciding how to expand is the most important part to expanding. There are a number of combinations that could be used to actually bring in the eight new teams. It could be as simple as bringing them all in at once or as complicated as bringing two teams in every few years. If it were me, I would bring in four then wait a few years to bring in the other four. I would do it this way to avoid unfairness in divisional play. The first four expansion teams wouldn't go into their eventual division homes right away, instead forming their own temporary division. This would keep four team divisions across the league, avoiding any complaints of some teams playing 10 divisional games while others still play eight. When the next wave of four teams comes in, each expansion team will go into its respective division and divisional match-ups will rise from eight to 10. I would have a waiting period between the two groups of four teams to allow the second group of teams to build stadiums and prepare for life in the NFL. The first group to enter would obviously include the four teams that were already prepared to enter the league. I think the two group way is the easiest way to do it while avoiding many of the potential problems that come with expansion.

The second most important part of expanding is deciding how the expansion drafts go. To me, this is very simple. All 32 practice squads are fair game while the backups on each team are also fair game. A backup would be defined by the number of snaps a player gets per game. If a player has some type of specialty, like a speed rusher or a third down passing back, they are not considered backups. To prevent teams from saying that all of their backups are specialty players, each team can only have a certain number of specialty players. If a player fails to meet the snaps requirement and isn't designated as a specialty player, then he is eligible to be drafted in the expansion draft. If a team likes a certain player that is eligible and is drafted but they don't want to give him up, then they could give the expansion team that selected him a draft pick that is one round lower than the round he was originally drafted in. For instance, if an expansion team wants to give Jimmy Clausen a shot at starting quarterback but the Panthers don't want to part with him for whatever reason, then the expansion team would receive a third round pick from the Panthers since Clausen was originally selected in the second round. For those thinking, "That's ridiculous Clausen isn't worth giving up a third rounder to keep, he's third string," it becomes easier to giving something up when you know you get to keep something more valuable, doesn't it? Free agents would not be part of the expansion draft and teams would have to negotiate contracts with them either before or after the draft. Also, expansion teams would take on the entire contract of every player they draft in the expansion draft. This wouldn't be a problem though because practice squad players and most backups do not make big money.

This covers most of the important things that would come up if the NFL were to expand. I would like to remind you that this piece is called "Dreaming a Mega NFL Expansion" with major emphasis on the word 'dreaming.' The NFL is not going to expand and while there are always rumors about a franchise in LA or London, the fact is those two cities would obtain a franchise through relocation, not expansion. I wrote this article thinking that it'd be fun if I could write down a NFL expansion plan that didn't sound like complete trash. I believe that most of my points are believable and logical. I chose when to go into detail and when not to keep the article from becoming too technical, to keep it from becoming a legit argument to why the NFL should expand to 40 teams. The article isn't meant to feed into the rumors of potential NFL expansion in the future. I wanted people to know it could happen and it would probably work out fine. I wanted to get people to think of what the NFL will do to keep growing and expanding without much international potential. I wanted people to realize all the talent that's wasted on the bench each week and would happen if they got their shot. I wanted people to dream of a perfect NFL.

My dream went so far I decided to write it down and post it for the whole world to see. How far will yours go?