18 Games? Another attempt to kill the golden goose

The NFL is by far the most popular sport in the U.S. One of the things that make it the number
one sport is the number of games. In baseball you can stink for a month or two and still win your
division. In basketball and hockey, you can teter around .500 and sail into the playoffs. Not so in
football where every game counts. 16 games, all important.

Now Roger Goodell and the 32 owners want to start plucking more feathers from the Golden
Goose, which is the NFL. They've already taken a step to over complicate Over Time (another
subject I will comment on in a separate column), now they want to add 2 more games to water
down the league . . . so they can make more money and teams can lose 8- 9 games and still
probably make the playoffs. With 18 games, you can stink for a whole month and be ok, just
like the Grand Old Game.

Question: Last season, were you tired of seeing teams like the Colts rest their players the last
few games for the playoffs? Besides the slew of unhappy fantasy football owners, watching Peyton
Manning and Reggie Wayne sit on the sidelines kept fans who spent hard-earned money to see
them play from getting their money's worth. Certainly they did not buy tickets to watch Jim Sorgi!
With 18 games, you will see more Sorgis than Mannings near the end of the season . . .

There's also the injury question and the compensation question. Odds say more players will get
hurt. And odds also say, the owners probably don't want to pay the players any more for the 2
games. Owners got to be rich by watching every penny and never buying more than 2 boxes of girl
scout cookies.

Unfortunately, like Over Time, if Goodell and the owners want 18 games . . . it will probably
happen. They have the power and the money. Regardless of how high we hold some NFL Players,
they are like us . . . merely employees.

Barry Cofield of the Giants said it best when he told reporters: "Personally, I don't see how it helps
the game, or the quality of the game. But if they (the owners) demand it, they will probably get it."

Sorry, Goose!

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