Goodell: 'No Drop-Dead Date' For NFL Season
Roger Goodell's been on a telephone tour de force with NFL season-ticket holders, explaining what all of this lockout business means and answering questions from the people who just so happen to make this a multi-billion business.
His latest stop found him on a bunch of Pittsburgh phone lines and while the call went mostly the same, Goodell had an interesting answer, per Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when it came down to the date on which the NFL needs to start to get a full season in.
"First, our objective is to have a full season, we scheduled a full season, we are planning for a full season and that's our intent," Goodell said. "If we're not capable of doing that we will play as many games as possible and want to finish with the Super Bowl."
Most importantly though, how many games will such a season necessitate?
"There is no drop-dead date," Goodell said.
So, theoretically, we could have a sudden-death, round-robin season starting in Week 14, where everyone plays their division rivals once and whoever's got the best record/tiebreaker record moves on to the playoffs, where they'll be crowned with a giant asterisk upon winning the Super Bowl.
Now, Goodell kind of has to say this -- if he points out that there's a certain date in which the NFL season would be lost, that provides a hard target for the players to eye when it comes to absolutely finishing off the season.
Not that they want to finish it, but canceling a season would be pretty devastating to an owner or two who's already accepted season-ticket money. Even if the fans get their money, plus one percent interest, back -- one has to think that each of the 31 individual NFL owners can procure a better interest rate over the course of a lost season that actually would equate to profit.
