Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared to pull back the curtain on what NFL owners have proposed in the past regarding the International Series.
“There was talk of doing a week – an international week – where you would play games in 16 different places and you would just add an extra week off,” he said, according to ESPN.com. “So you play 16 (weeks) of regular season, you have two weeks off – one of those weeks would have been an international week.
“I think it would have been phenomenal for the game. Now the owners wanted to push for 17 games for the extra revenue and because they care so much about player safety, but it would have been nice.”
An “international week” makes sense as each team would be on equal footing when dealing with the consequences of traveling abroad. Then you get the added benefits of an extra week off for players to rest and reset.
In reality, making this idea a reality would be very difficult.
There is the challenge of identifying 16 different locations that could be suitable for games. Beyond determining the cities themselves, securing venues wouldn’t be easy when the NFL often uses stadiums reserved for football clubs around the world. Scheduling conflicts would inevitably arise.
Next, you have to align several different time zones with the US viewing windows. The most extreme example to date came when the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers played at 10:35 a.m. local time in Melbourne, Australia, to secure a prime time slot on the East Coast of the United States.
The NFL’s media partners probably wouldn’t like to go an entire week without games, either.
A dedicated international week could have been a bust for NFL owners once they weighed all the logistics.
Gn sports
