Killing The Golden Pigskin

Has there ever been an expansion of a popular sport that fewer people asked for than an expansion of the NFL season to 18 games? Sure. Two more games onto the season. Woot.

On the other hand, you're not actually adding any extra football. You're just removing two preseason games- games that people tend to watch anyway- and replacing them with regular-season games. In the process, the starters- which would either have sat out those two games or played at half-tilt and handed things over to lower-level guys fighting for roster spots- will instead have to play every down at full-tilt. And with attention currently focused as it is on injury avoidance, two extra games added onto their current workload is something their bodies are simply not capable of. And everyone is seemingly willing to go to a work stoppage over it.

David Fleming of ESPN's Page 2 envisions the NFL paying dearly for those two extra games, and sooner rather than later. In the process, he also envisions happy days ahead for the UFL, a league that has been positioning itself explicitly as a minor-league outfit.

That's the UFL, which currently boasts talent such as Josh McCown, Brooks Bollinger, Ahman Green, Anthony Davis, Daunte Culpepper, Maurice Clarett, DeMarcus Faggins, Morton Greenwood, Marcel Shipp, and Tim Rattay. If you'd like a look at it, a game is on tonight at 6 PM Eastern on Versus, and boy, is that TV deal starting to look like the best move Versus ever made.