If a ton of people outside the USA cares about the NFL that otherwise would not have cared without the international series, that is obviously good for the sport.

Advantages:
Makes NFL and rich owners more money

Disadvantages:
-Takes away a home game. Very important in a very short 16 game season
-Forces teams to prep through a short week dealing with major jet lag
-Despite the NFL fleecing cities for massive public financing of stadiums, it dicks over home markets, particularly entertainment districts. Big time.

So again. How does making more money in a league that is already dripping with money do a damn thing good for the sport? It's sad when we think that making money is "good for the sport" vs. protecting the integrity of a game

To keep the competitive balance I would propose that they work up to 16 games overseas, all on Thursday nights. The team involved would each have a bye week the week before so that they will have been off for 10-11 days (depending on a Monday game) and can leave early to avoid any jet lag issues. Coming back they will again be off for another 10-11 days to get back home and adjust to the local time.

Every team gives up one home game every two years. The games can be held wherever they want in the world with this much time between games and the games should be more competitive than the Thursday night crap we get now.

Denver and probably a few other teams are legally precluded from giving up a home game, so that won't work unless (in Denver's case) you increase the schedule by one game thereby the Broncos play "10" games at Pile High.

You are just obviously dead-ass wrong here. All of the other major sports get a ton of international talent every year. If American Football is popular outside the USA, then amateur football might develop, leading to a larger talent pool for college football, and then the pros, etc. Yes, its also profitable for the NFL, but if you can't or won't recognize the fact that having American Football be more than just a weird local sport that only Americans care about is good for the game, then I don't know what to tell you.

Also, you are getting amazingly bent out of shape over one damned home game every few years.

All that does is create more competitive balance. It doesn't fix the competitive imbalance.

They would still have to play the next week recovering from reverse jet lag playing a team that has 10 un-lagged days to prep. And when it comes to playoff bubbles, you'll have teams with 8 home games making the playoffs over teams who only had 7. It's a pure money grab.

I'm bent out of shape about it? It's 6% of an entire season. Tell me another league that would marginalize that. No one game is more critical in pro sports than an NFL game because of how few games they play.

Okay, I agree that there is some small positive benefit to what you say above. But it is not worth creating competitive balance to do that. And there's a major limit to how much you can grow the sport beyond how fast it's growing now. Because football only works if you have a great deal of structure. It's not like basketball or soccer where you can learn to play well by casual pickup games.

There are ways to grow intrigue. Silly to believe you have to go all-in or bust unless you're going for a money grab. Start by shipping over as many meaningless games and events to Europe as possible.

How is Denver "legally precluded" from giving up a home game?

Contract between the team and the municipal body which owns the stadium. Broncos must play 10 games a year to maintain the lease.

Weird, Alnorth said that leases don't cover the amount of games played each year.

http://espn.go.com/blog/denver-bronc...ayed-in-london

Saurce.

Here are a few other ideas:
-Ship more preseason games and training camp time over to Europe
-Ship over the pro bowl and all their competitions
-Play LOTS of friendlies. Including in the postseason. An awesome experience -- Chiefs' fans can watch Aaron Murray play a full game. UK can root for their home team to beat he Chiefs' backups
-Create a European combine
-Hell, if owners are going to fight to expand playoffs, then consider competitive exhibitions in the postseason

All of these things significantly grow interest and TV revenue internationally as well as domestically. NONE of them **** with regular season games. Does very little to dick over NFL markets that heavily rely on home games.

Nice. Just another example of how the Broncos are about winning and the Chiefs are about revenue.

Sweet