ShareThisIn October 2007, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made an offhand remark to reporters about the possibility of showcasing a future Super Bowl overseas.
"There's a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl in London," Goodell said. "So we'll be looking at that."
At the time I didn't think too much about it. I'm sure there'd be a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl on the moon if a dome could be built and seat-licensing agreements could be worked out.
Apparently, however, Goodell meant what he said.
Last Friday the British Broadcasting Company reported that serious negotiations were under way to have a Super Bowl at Wembley Stadium, and the NFL confirmed the discussions were legitimate.
Big Ben throwing passes in the shadow of Big Ben?
"We've spoken on what it would take to host and for us to bring it over," Frank Supovitz, vice president of sports events in London, told the BBC. "The city has all the facilities needed, and in great quantity."
I have no doubt the game would be a hard sellout and the NFL would make a gazillion dollars off the event, but playing the ultimate championship of the ultimate American sport abroad just seems like a bad idea.
The NFL will argue that it's simply trying to grow the game internationally, and it has great success with the exhibition and regular season games it farms out to the Old Country.
Still, American football is little more than a novelty in a land much more in tune to another kind of football.
NFL Europe struggled to develop a fan base, and eventually shifted most of its franchises to Germany to take advantage of American military bases (and the soldiers who bought tickets to games).
A lot of fans are already ripping the league on message boards for even considering staging a Super Bowl outside the United States -- some saying if it happens they'll never watch an NFL game again.
Hey, I don't want to see it either, but let's not put it in the same category as Jane Fonda sitting on top of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun back in 1972.
This is about good, old-fashioned corporate greed. If London makes a good enough offer, the NFL won't blink before signing off on the deal -- despite weather issues and the small detail that London is six hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone.
That doesn't make it right, of course. It makes as much sense as Chelsea and Everton playing the FA Cup Final -- the premiere event in English soccer -- at Giants Stadium.
Sure it'd draw big crowd, but it'd be a slap in the face to the core fans of the sport.
Here's hoping Goodell decides against slapping NFL fans in the face when the site of the 2013 Super Bowl is announced.
(Contact Scott Adamson of the Anderson Independent-Mail in Anderson, S.C., at adamsons(at)independentmail.com.)
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Only in countries that have teams
The Super Bowl should be limited to countries that are the permanent homes of NFL teams, which right now would be the USA. Now in the future if England ever had a team, or Canada, since the Bills moving there one day seems the most likely scenario for an international NFL team, then those countries could be considered. But it should stay in countries that are the full time home. I say full time home because I don't think you could consider Canada in its regular state of hosting 1/8th of the Bills home games to be a regular NFL city at the moment.