My wife and I once got two free tickets to go see the Indianapolis Colts pre-season game. We had a really nice time and were gratefully to get the tickets. We stayed to watch the game to the very end, but about half the crowd left at halftime and there was maybe 10% of the crowd left by the end of the game. Considering this and the fact that most of the stars only play a few minutes, the NFL Pre-Season is a waste of time.
I have two possible ideas for changing the Pre-Season to make it better for fans and teams. My first ideas is to change from 4 Pre-Season games to 2 Pre-Season games and add 2 Regular Season games. Fans want to see more games that matter.
My second idea is to have just 3 Pre-Season games with 1 game as a home game, 1 game as an away game, and 1 at a neutral site. The NFL has been adding games during the regular season at sites like England and Mexico, but this takes important home games away from teams and can cause problems with travel. There needs to be 16 neutral site Pre-Season games with 8 games played outside the U.S. and 8 played inside the U.S. Here are some possible suggestions for games outside the U.S., Mexico, Canada, England, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Russia, and Porter Rico. This will take the NFL to other countries expanding on the popularity of football around the world. There are also some states and cities in the U.S. that never get to see the NFL live. Here are a few places to bring the NFL: San Antonio, Las Vegas, Notre Dame, Los Angeles, Alaska, Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Okalahoma, and of course you would still have the Hall of Fame game in Canton, OH.
Four and in some cases 5 Pre-Season games is just way too many. The NFL needs to make some changes that will bring more interest to the games and give fans their money’s worth. I know this will likely never happen because the league still gets full price on pre-season ticket sales.
