Roger Goodell says an NFL team in London ‘could be five or 10 years away’
By Mike Dyce
There has been a lot of talk about NFL expansion and the possibility of a team in London with the success of the games staged overseas. NFL commissioner Rodger Goodell added some fuel to the fire of those rumors and rumblings with his latest comments.
“It depends on if we continue to see that growth and how fast it goes,” the NFL Commissioner told NFL Media’s Alex Flanagan on NFL Total Access on Thursday, via NFL.com. “We couldn’t be happier with what we are seeing.
“We actually couldn’t be more surprised by the tremendous demand for NFL football in London and the U.K. in general and frankly even Europe. It’s not something I think is 15 or 20 years away, it could be five or 10 years away.”
Goodell has one supporter for a London based team in New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who has been on board for a while. Kraft has a similar time line for a potential London team setting the end of the decade as a target.
“I can see the kind of reception we got there,” said Kraft, via NFL.com. “… I would not be disappointed, and I would also believe that we should work hard to try and have a franchise in London before the decade was out.”
The logistics of a team in London would be a nightmare based on the travel schedule alone. Surely, they’d have to boot the Miami Dolphins from the AFC East and put the London team in that division to make the travel schedule as tolerable as possible.