The NFL is highly profitable, but its stadium use is inefficient. A team hosts only nine to eleven exhibition and regular-season games over five months. What if every team had weekly home games so their stadiums did not sit idle half the time?
Impossible? Not if every team had two rosters. One unit would be on the road while the other played at home. Instead of 17 games, each franchise would play 34. Eligibility for the playoffs would be based on the franchise’s total wins. The playoffs would stay the same, with each qualifying franchise fielding a team of players chosen from both units, their “playoff” team.
More tickets, luxury suites, parking, hot dogs, beer, and player jerseys to sell. Expanded broadcast rights. For the sports gambler, double the point spreads, over/under, prop bets, and futures. There are twice as many options for fantasy football leagues. Double the content for sports journalists and pundits to parse and more off-field drama over contracts and firing coaches.
Whoa! Many readers will have reasons why this could not work. Here are some likely objections.
Past attempts to offer more football have failed. Starting with the World Football League in the 1970s, football’s history is littered with failed spring football leagues. This is not a new off-season league; it’s an expanded NFL. The NFL season was 12 games in the 1950s. In 1960, it became 14 games, then 16 in 1978, and 17 in 2021. Adding more games has consistently increased revenue because fans continue to fill the stadiums and watch the broadcasts.
Fans in most markets will not buy twice as many tickets. The demand for tickets in most markets is very high. According to the Sports Business Journal, the average attendance at a 2024 NFL game was 69,555, filling, on average, 98.3% of capacity. Eleven of the 32 teams averaged more than 100% capacity. Even if average game attendance dipped by 20%, total attendance would increase by 63% for a 17-game homestand. For markets currently exceeding 100% capacity, it is hard to imagine a decline that large.
There are not enough qualified players to fill 34 teams. The product will be diluted, and fans will lose interest. That may be the strongest objection, but it is not necessarily accurate. An NFL team has an active roster of 53, or about 1,700 players across the league. Where will the additional 1,700 come from? Consider the following sources.
While a team has 53 active players on game day, it signs 90 to the off-season roster, with 90 NFL-quality players under contract. Where else would players come from? The single largest source is college football. The NBA has successfully drafted players after one or two college seasons without detriment to NCAA basketball. The NFL could do the same by changing its eligibility rules. The 2024 AP All-America team had nine sophomores and one freshman. The second team had eight sophomores and three freshmen, and the third team had five sophomores. An NFL team almost certainly would draft them and some of their classmates if they could.
Approximately 10,000 to 11,000 scholarship players are in the 133 Football Bowl Subdivision schools. Changing eligibility rules would increase the available draft pool by at least 5,000 players. Then there are the more than 15,000 scholarship players in the remaining 219 Division 1 schools. It is hard to estimate how many players would attract interest in an expanded draft, but players from these schools regularly make it to the NFL.
Think Tony Romo, Phil Simms, Carson Wentz, Tarik Cohen, Cooper Kupp. There are 400 players in the Canadian Football League and the United Football League. Perhaps there will be more Hall of Famers in the future, like Kurt Warner, who plays arena football.
Given these sources, how would an NFL team build game-day rosters of 106 players? Start with the 90 players signed to the off-season roster. Add another 40 from the expanded pool of college players and four or five from the CFL or UFL. This would give the franchise roughly 135 players to build their two franchise units.
If additional players were absorbed into the NFL from these sources, would the average fan notice a difference in the level of play? Would they think, “Wow, the game certainly has deteriorated. I’m not going to watch.” There might be a few more fumbles and penalties and more missed field goals. But all these football players are the best on the planet, and their talent would be distributed across the league as it is now. The finest teams would still be those smartest at selecting the best talent and then coaching them to success.
Quarterbacks would still regularly throw for 300 yards in a game. Running backs would still rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season. Dazzling catches and interceptions would still happen weekly. In particular, vicious tackles would still make fans wince. Many games would still be won with the two-minute drill. It is unlikely the average fan would sense a difference in play from today’s game.
Of course, there would be many details to work out.
Restructuring the NFL for a 34-game season would take commitment and creativity. But it would be the quickest and easiest way for the NFL to expand. There would be no need to find new owners and then build stadiums. It would not take longer to create a league with two teams per franchise than to vet an ownership group and then make one stadium, maybe less. And all the new revenue goes to the current owners!
Sadly, the odds are long for such an innovation. The ethos of large, successful organizations like the NFL makes such a bold move unlikely. Why take the risk? Too bad! The increased thrills and expanded opportunities for fans, players, and owners would be a game-changer.
