Although talks are extremely preliminary, the NFL is investigating adding a 17th regular-season game and playing it outside the United States. The extra game would take the place of one in the preseason, allowing every team to play once abroad without sacrificing a home game. - ESPN.com
Are you serious? I think Goodell looked over at the NBA and said "we need a piece of that." The NFL does not need another week added to the season, that is for sure. I wonder, though, if this opens up and opportunity in fantasy football. One of the worst parts about fantasy football is the playoffs. Because scoring is so random in fantasy football, it is seemingly meaningless how good your team has been for 13 weeks. In leagues that allow over 50% of the teams to make the playoffs, drafting guys based on good schedules in weeks 14 + 15 is important (which is ridiculous in my opinion). So knowing now that there are 17 weeks, clipping the back one off, we were customarily playing 16 weeks. With a potential for 17 weeks now, what if leagues played there playoffs with double long weeks.
For example, 12 team league that allows 6 to get in, giving the top 2 teams byes (by the way this is the best way to do a playoff format - if you do not give something to the top two teams then the regular season is embarrassingly irrelevant). Week 13 could be the 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5 round. This could be played in week 13. Then the 1 vs. 4/5 game and the 2 vs. 3/6 game could be played in weeks 14 and 15 using a cumulative score. Finally, the championship game could be played in weeks 16 and 17. There would still be a 13 week season, but now the playoffs might not be as random in their results.
So maybe there would be some good to Goodell's money grubbin' 18 week season.
