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London mayor meets with NFL officials to discuss a team in Olympic Stadium

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I never said anything about moving a team over there. I'm talking about playing a few games over there a year. As a Browns fan, I wouldn't wish any city to lose their home team(maybe Shittsburgh). Even losing teams.

I was commenting on the part of the article that was talking about the olympic stadium needing a full time tenant and I thought you were commenting on that also.

I don't mind teams playing games over there every once in a while but if the English are such big fans of American football then they should make their own league and we can play them in the preseason.
 
I never said anything about moving a team over there. I'm talking about playing a few games over there a year(different teams each time). As a Browns fan, I wouldn't wish any city to lose their home team(maybe Shittsburgh). Even losing teams.

GTFO, especially since the Steelers were huge opponents of the move to Baltimore. If any team would move, and I say the same thing about when it comes up with LA or San Antonio, it would be the Jaguars. Honestly, I don't think the players would care about it as much as you think. They would get paid millions of pounds (which are actually worth more than USD) and would be in the US during 8 road games (plus playoffs) and the bye. For the US, it would be huge because it would bring even more notoriety and money to the NFL. For London, they would have another billion dollar industry that would help bring people from other parts of England down to see an American Football game. My question would be: how would you rearrange the divisions? Here's how I think the NFL divisions will shape up to be by 2020:

AFC North
Cleveland Browns
Pittsburgh Steelers
Cincinnati Bengals
Baltimore Ravens

AFC West
Kansas City Chiefs
Oakland Raiders
Denver Broncos
Los Angeles Chargers

AFC East
New England Patriots
New York Jets
Buffalo Bills
London Jaguars

AFC South
Indianapolis Colts
Tennessee Titans
Houston Texans
Miami Dolphins

NFC South
Carolina Panthers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
New Orleans Saints
Atlanta Falcons

NFC North
Chicago Bears
Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers
Minnesota Vikings

NFC West
St. Louis Rams
Arizona Cardinals
Seattle Seahawks
San Francisco 49ers

NFC East
Philadelphia Eagles
New York Giants
Dallas Cowboys
Washington Redskins

San Diego's fans are becoming porous and Jacksonville never sells out. Those two would be the first two to move.
 
GTFO, especially since the Steelers were huge opponents of the move to Baltimore. If any team would move, and I say the same thing about when it comes up with LA or San Antonio, it would be the Jaguars. Honestly, I don't think the players would care about it as much as you think. They would get paid millions of pounds (which are actually worth more than USD) and would be in the US during 8 road games (plus playoffs) and the bye. For the US, it would be huge because it would bring even more notoriety and money to the NFL. For London, they would have another billion dollar industry that would help bring people from other parts of England down to see an American Football game. My question would be: how would you rearrange the divisions? Here's how I think the NFL divisions will shape up to be by 2020:

AFC North
Cleveland Browns
Pittsburgh Steelers
Cincinnati Bengals
Baltimore Ravens

AFC West
Kansas City Chiefs
Oakland Raiders
Denver Broncos
Los Angeles Chargers

AFC East
New England Patriots
New York Jets
Buffalo Bills
London Jaguars

AFC South
Indianapolis Colts
Tennessee Titans
Houston Texans
Miami Dolphins

NFC South
Carolina Panthers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
New Orleans Saints
Atlanta Falcons

NFC North
Chicago Bears
Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers
Minnesota Vikings

NFC West
St. Louis Rams
Arizona Cardinals
Seattle Seahawks
San Francisco 49ers

NFC East
Philadelphia Eagles
New York Giants
Dallas Cowboys
Washington Redskins

San Diego's fans are becoming porous and Jacksonville never sells out. Those two would be the first two to move.

I guess I should have put a chuckling smiley next to Shittsburgh... It was a joke, Jesus. I don't even have a rabid hate for the Steelers like most Browns fans(they have a well run organization). I just think its funny to take shots at Pittsburgh anytime I can work them in(never thought I'd have to defend any of them...On a Cavs site no less). I wouldn't want any current team to move overseas.
 
I guess I should have put a chuckling smiley next to Shittsburgh... It was a joke, Jesus. I don't even have a rabid hate for the Steelers like most Browns fans(they have a well run organization). I just think its funny to take shots at Pittsburgh anytime I can work them in(never thought I'd have to defend any of them...On a Cavs site no less). I wouldn't want any current team to move overseas.

It's all good man. I know that this shall happen from time to time. But yeah, I do see Jacksonville relocating by the end of the decade.
 
The weekly traveling would put teams at a huge disadvantage. They could do like three parts of scheduling... Play 4 away games in the states.. then 8 home games in London where the US team is coming off of a bye, then finish the season in the US with 4 more away games.
 
I think people are underestimating how fucking BRUTAL the flight from the US to England is. If you fly overnight, you leave at 7 PM and arrive at 7 AM local time on only 5-6 hours of sleep. You lose a night of sleep traveling. If you leave Friday morning, due to time zones, you don't arrive until Friday evening/night local time, and you lose a day of practice.

The logistics of having just one team on the other side of the planet is just brutal.
 
Out of curiosity...whats the general opinion of Americans in Britain? I know we generally like them and I get the impression that they embrace our culture.

I don't know, but every time I run into a Brit on Xbox Live I brag about us winning the Revolutionary War. Really pisses them off.
 
This is a classic battle between the people who want to expand business and stand to gain from expanded business, pitted against the people who have to make that expansion work. The NFL cannot get any bigger in the United States. They are by far the number one sports and leisure enterprise in the country.

Then how do you gain more value for your franchise? You get the rest of the world to love football like Americans love football. In the NBA, people brought the sport to different countries and they adopted it. Similar efforts have been made in Europe for decades, but it hasn't picked up the way basketball has. A real NFL team based somewhere in Europe is the key to making that happen.

Are the gripes about flights and quality of play legitimate? Are player and coach concerns viable complaints? Absolutely. But if you have ever worked in a corporate job, you know that whatever makes more money usually gets more attention from people at the top than making the job easier for employees.
 
This is a classic battle between the people who want to expand business and stand to gain from expanded business, pitted against the people who have to make that expansion work. The NFL cannot get any bigger in the United States. They are by far the number one sports and leisure enterprise in the country.

Then how do you gain more value for your franchise? You get the rest of the world to love football like Americans love football. In the NBA, people brought the sport to different countries and they adopted it. Similar efforts have been made in Europe for decades, but it hasn't picked up the way basketball has. A real NFL team based somewhere in Europe is the key to making that happen.

Are the gripes about flights and quality of play legitimate? Are player and coach concerns viable complaints? Absolutely. But if you have ever worked in a corporate job, you know that whatever makes more money usually gets more attention from people at the top than making the job easier for employees.

The NBA never put a team in Europe yet it still got big over there. American football can get big the same way basketball did, by making a new league for their people to play in. If the NFL wants to get involved in making that new league then i'm all for it but they don't need to take one of the 32 teams they already have over there.
 
The NBA never put a team in Europe yet it still got big over there. American football can get big the same way basketball did, by making a new league for their people to play in. If the NFL wants to get involved in making that new league then i'm all for it but they don't need to take one of the 32 teams they already have over there.

They actually had a league, but the NFL was losing $30 million dollars for every season over there, so they closed up shop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe

If Wikipedia is to be believed, of course.
 
NYC to London is a 6/7 hr flight. London to San Diego is a 10/11 hr flight. Do private jets fly faster? I could see that the team in England could play two home and two away games back to back so that they could spend 2 weeks in the US/London so they wouldn't have to travel as much while having a training facility in the US and in England. They would only have to make the trip across the pond once a month then.
 
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They already tried the NFL in Europe twice, and it didn't work that well either time. The first time it was called the World League and the second time it was called NFL Europe. I used to have a favorite European team, the Barcelona Dragons, that I would watch when they replayed a game on an obscure sports channel after school. Unfortunately I was one of the few people who watched the games, and I wasn't even from the same continent.

People just don't care about American football over there like we do here. They feel about the same towards it as we do soccer. Just a cultural thing.
 
They already tried the NFL in Europe twice, and it didn't work that well either time. The first time it was called the World League and the second time it was called NFL Europe. I used to have a favorite European team, the Barcelona Dragons, that I would watch when they replayed a game on an obscure sports channel after school. Unfortunately I was one of the few people who watched the games, and I wasn't even from the same continent.

People just don't care about American football over there like we do here. They feel about the same towards it as we do soccer. Just a cultural thing.

Did you read ANYTHING of what I just posted? I mean, I know it's Wiki, but everything is sourced, etc. It wasn't successful because they were losing $30,000,000 a year. It wasn't successful because it wasn't REAL NFL football with REAL NFL football players.

REAL NFL football is successful over there. Fake NFL football is not.
 
Did you read ANYTHING of what I just posted? I mean, I know it's Wiki, but everything is sourced, etc. It wasn't successful because they were losing $30,000,000 a year. It wasn't successful because it wasn't REAL NFL football with REAL NFL football players.

REAL NFL football is successful over there. Fake NFL football is not.

The NFL has been promoting American football in various other countries for a long time.

It has been in Japan since before WW2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_national_American_football_team

American style football has been very popular recently in Germany:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_national_American_football_team

Roger Goodell is still a huge supporter of the NFL growing internationally. THey have supported youth programs to push popularity of the sport, but unlike the NBA that has not seemed to allow the game to grow organically. As long as Goodell is commissioner, there will be talk of it.
 

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