File this under dumbest things you will ever hear in your life: Roger Goodell is thinking about hosting one of the Super Bowls in London. Not London, Ohio; not London, Kentucky; not even London, New Hampshire; London, England, where in order to get to the game each team will have to board a flight that lasts over one million hours.
Imagine if the Green Bay Packers made it to the Super Bowl; Brett Favre's back will definitely go out on this flight, leading to two weeks of "will he play or won't he." This will undoubtedly lead thousands of Green Bay fans to drown their sorrows in whole milk and cheese.
When I first heard the news that the Super Bowl may be played in London one day, I must admit I was shocked. I figured Goodell's first choice would be Russia so he could be with Stalin, Lenin, and Malenkov, his communist dictator brethren.
Goodell must be stopped. The NFL is currently at a standstill, but if Goodell continues to suck the teat of white-collar, corporate America, eventually people will begin to get their jollies somewhere else.
My father thinks this will happen sooner rather than later, and he might not be wrong. The Buffalo News reported that after four weeks of the NFL season, the Bills' television ratings have dropped 15 percent in Buffalo from last year.
One of the reasons for the drop may be the number of commercials televised per game. It is tough to find the rhythm of a game when at every opportunity, even if it is just for a quick injury time out, the network goes to a commercial or a self promotion for their own television show. It is tough to watch the games with my dad at this point because he gets so angry with the NFL that it rubs off on me. He says that he can't watch any game that doesn't involve the Bills, and I think a lot of people from his generation feel the same way.
He has this idea which I used to think was crazy. Yet, the more I watch football and the more I hear former musicians like Bon Jovi and John Cougar Mellencamp become salesmen, the more my dad's bitterness rubs off on me. I feel like this idea may have some legs.
NFL On Demand.
If this service exists already, my idea is to revamp it, make it my own, and sell the plan to the NFL for one million dollars. Actually, the plan is just to tell everybody who actually reads this about the idea, and if I get enough responses maybe I'll think about calling up Fidel Goodell.
Here is how NFL On Demand would work: the NFL offers viewers a deal where they pay $800 a season in order to watch every NFL game with limited commercials. Also, each team would have their own local announcer cover the game so that names would not be mispronounced and team history would not be rumbled, bumbled and fumbled around.
Here's the catch: the NFL could have major companies who usually air commercials such as Miller, Budweiser, Coors, O'Doul's or other non-alcoholic companies, sponsor each game. Every 10 to15 minutes someone would say "this game is being brought to you with limited commercial interruption by Budweiser, the king of beers."
This way the NFL wins, they have people paying $50 every week to watch games on the television, they don't have to worry about upsetting fans with blackouts because people are paying to watch the game and they have major companies advertising during the game without breaking away as much from the action.
This is a win-win idea for everyone, except for the people who do not want to pay $50 a week to watch football or enjoy watching the commercials. The answer here is that the NFL still airs its regularly scheduled games on CBS and FOX, except it airs them with even more commercials as usual in order to make up for whatever advertising money they may lose from NFL On Demand. This way people can still watch the game, or whatever part of the game the commercials don't run over.
The major problem with this plan is that it goes against everything that Goodell stands for. He punishes people without knowing all of the facts. Pacman Jones, Chris Henry: the punishments did not fit the crimes. Goodell has an evil master plan to ruin the league and squash the soul of every blue-collar football fan in America. Why else would he think of having the Super Bowl, the culmination of a 17-week season in which each fan lives and dies with their team, in a different country, in a different part of the world?
Goodell wants to move the championship game to London where the real fans will not be able to afford to go watch the game? Corporate sponsors who don't know how to cheer and confused Europeans ready to riot because they don't see a spherical ball will fill the entire arena.
Goodell's plan to make the league unaffordable and unrelatable to its fans must be stopped now. The NFL On Demand is a step in the right direction, but just in case we need to step it up a notch, somebody get Austin Powers on the phone because if there's a problem in London, he's the man with a plan.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
