NFL Owners Continue to Debate Expanding Regular Season

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Roger Goodell wants to expand the NFL regular season to 17 or 18 games. Team owners, who would presumably profit from such an arrangement, seem to favor it. However, enough issues remain with the plan that Goodell doesn't foresee an owners' vote on it before their meetings conclude at noon Wednesday.

"Right now I do not anticipate a vote on that, but I do anticipate a full discussion," the commissioner said at a media briefing while the owners broke for lunch between their morning and afternoon meetings.

Goodell and NFL General Counsel Jeff Pash said the league would begin negotiations on the new collective bargaining with the players' union next month, and that the plan is to deliver to the players a report on the idea of expanding the regular season. While they'd like to get the players on board with the plan, it's also clear the league doesn't feel it needs its players' approval to put it in place.

"I think at some point in time the owners may decide that one of these alternatives is the best, and then we would move forward on that," Goodell said.

Earlier in the day, union chief DeMaurice Smith cited the extra toll that additional games would take on the players' health and stated his desire to know how much each team would profit from the additional games. It's clear he intends to make this part of the CBA negotiations, and justifiably so. If the players are being asked to play more, it's more than reasonable that they ask to be compensated accordingly.

Goodell also announced the NFL Network's new deal with Comcast, as well as two-year extensions of the current deals with NBC and CBS. The new deals include provisions that allow for the expansion of the regular season.

He also said there has been some discussion about expanding the size of active rosters should the league expand the regular season to 17 or 18 games.


Some other topics Goodell addressed at his briefing:

- The league approved the deal that will keep the Saints in Louisiana through 2025. No big surprise here, and Goodell said there's no concern about the deal getting through the Louisiana state legislature. The announcement came hours before the league will award the 2013 Super Bowl, most likely to New Orleans.

- He disputed the notion that changes to the league's pension policies were the reason some high-profile assistant coaches were stepping down from their jobs. "The reality is that benefits are changing for everybody," Goodell said. "These kinds of programs that the coaches and front office people have had, where they were basically defined benefits, don't exist anywhere else anymore."

- In the wake of Delaware's legalizing sports gambling, he reiterated the NFL's opposition to the idea of people betting on its games. The NFL does seem poised to approve a plan to allow league and team logos to be used on state lottery game tickets, but "that's a far from and a complete distinction from betting on the outcomes of games."

- A discussion of the league's anti-tampering rules is set for tomorrow, with one possible outcome that the league allow teams to talk to free agents before free agency actually begins. This happens now, of course, and the policy that prohibits it is poorly enforced. Legalizing it would, presumably, solve any problems.