Read Bleacher Fan’s argument that the NFL does not need a pre-season and Loyal Homer’s argument the NFL should maintain a pre-season.
It is NFL training camp, and veteran professional football players hate it. It is hot at the tail end of the summer, especially when they are forced to spent time away from their families and go through the motions for a team they already know they made. After camp pre-season hits, which consists of four full length games with rosters sometimes topping 80 players. It is a maze of players that coaches promise playing time. There is no way around it – for veteran NFL players, the pre-season sucks.
Football fans hate it, too. They are forced to pay full price for pre-season games that do not make any impact on the regular season. In some cases, when fans refuse the $100 ticket price to watch a game where their favorite players will only play for two series (at best), they are threatened with a local blackout of the game. That sure is endearing for the fans.
It is the NFL pre-season, and it seems everyone – except the owners – hates it.
So, why does the NFL pre-season exist? Coaches will argue that seeing the players compete in game situation that do not count toward the overall record is a positive thing. Some players – especially undrafted rookies (folks like San Diego Chargers tight end Antonio Gates and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner) argue that they need the time to prove themselves worthy of a spot on an NFL roster. Some really geeky fans (even more than me…) will watch the NFL Network wire to wire since they are showing EVERY pre-season game on the channel in 2009. The real reason pre-season exists? These games make money for the owners. Big time. They do not have to pull out all the “game day” stops they usually do to impress fans and create the ultimate fan experience, but they DO get to charge full price for tickets. That is a lot of margin for very little investment… a.k.a. an owners dream.
Fortunately, enough fans and players seem to have expressed their disdain for the pre-season that owners and the NFL are considering the option of expanding the regular season to absorb the normal pre-season schedule. In other words, the crappy games that never counted could become the early start to the regular season, a regular season that would expand to 20 games, rather than the normal 16.
While that option would make fans and owners happy, now the players would be unhappy, as cited by NFLPA union chief DeMaurice Smith. Smith believes extra regular season games would take a real toll on players, and the already high number of injuries we see in the NFL would become even higher.
Given both sides of the discussion and the general impression of the pre-season by all relevant parties, the question for today’s debaters to argue is:
Does the NFL even need a pre-season? Rather than having a four game pre-season and 16 game regular season, the debaters will argue to retain the current system or replace it with 20 regular season games.
Bleacher Fan will argue that the NFL does not need a pre-season while Loyal Homer will argue that the NFL should retain the pre-season.
Argue your sides strongly – the future of the NFL may depend on it!
